The Moon

The other night I was able to look at the full Moon, aka Super Worm Moon (the Earth warms & Earth worms reappear), with binoculars & for the first time I saw a lunar crater (Tycho) and valleys (they look like white lines extending from the lunar basin). In Astronomy I have learned a few fun facts about the Moon:

​* a Super Moon occurs when it orbits closest to the Earth as it revolves around Earth in an elliptical shape, not a circle
* it always faces us in the same direction due to gravity
* it causes tidal buldges that the Earth rotates into
* it waxes ('grows' to full Moon) and wanes ('shrinks' to new Moon) due to sunlight illuminating different portions of the side we see
* it takes 27.3 days to orbit the Earth but 29.5 days to complete a phase of lunar cycles
* the Moon's shadow causes a solar eclipse while the Earth's shadow causes a lunar eclipse