TRIVIA TODAY - Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Greetings Infomaniacs,

Did everyone catch the supermoon eclipse on Sunday night? It was dubbed the "blood moon" because the eclipse makes an orange, reddish appearance of the moon.

I hope so, since this Supermoon phenomenon - a full moon closest to the earth so that it appears larger and brighter - doesn't combine with a total lunar eclipse again until the year 2033.

If you missed it, just Google it and you'll find plenty of cool images! In the meantime, here are some fun facts about the moon for your enjoyment.

Enjoy!
Melissa

Questions? Comments? Email Melissa

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars."

HINT: (1945-), is a motivational speaker, author, radio DJ, former television host, and former politician.

RANDOM TIDBITS
The moon formed as a result of a collision known as the Giant Impact or the Big Whack, scientists figure. It went like this: A giant Mars-sized object hit Earth 4.6 billion years ago shortly after the birth of the sun and the solar system. A cloud of vaporized rock was kicked up (a mix of Earth and the other object) and went into orbit around Earth. The cloud cooled and condensed into a ring of small, solid bodies, which then gathered together, forming the moon.

Each day, though not at the same time, the moon comes up in the East and goes down in the West - much like the sun and other stars and for the same reason Earth rotates, on its axis, toward the East, pulling celestial objects into view and then forcing them to slip away.

The moon is about 27 percent the size of Earth and far less massive. Gravity on the moon is only about 1/6 of that on Earth. If you drop a rock on the moon, it falls more slowly (and astronauts can hope much higher). If you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you'd weigh 25 pounds on the moon.

The moon's orbit around Earth is an oval, not a circle, so the distance between the center of Earth and the moon's center varies throughout each orbit. At perigee (PEHR uh jee), when the moon is closest to Earth, that distance is 225,740 miles (363,300 kilometers). At apogee (AP uh jee), the farthest position, the distance is 251,970 miles (405,500 kilometers).

The craters on the moon reveal its violent history. Because there is almost no atmosphere and little activity inside the moon, the crater trace a record of impacts back billions of years. By dating the moon's many craters, scientists figured out that the moon (and Earth) underwent a Late Heavy Bombardment around four billion years ago.

Apollo astronauts used seismometers during their visits to the moon and discovered that the gray orb isn't a totally dead place, geologically speaking. Small moonquakes, originating several miles (kilometers) below the surface, are thought to be caused by the gravitational pull of Earth. Sometimes tiny fractures appear at the surface, and gas escapes.

(Live Science)

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars."

ANSWER: Les Brown.

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