BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy The Moon - Quiz *new*

The Moon has been the object of awe and fascination since our humanoid ancestors first looked up into the sky. Test your knowledge about Moon and maybe find out some interesting new facts about it.

The Moon - Quiz

This is a very simple diagram of a lunar eclipse. You can see that when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are lined up correctly, the Earth's shadow will fall on the Moon. This only happens at the time of a full Moon, but not every full Moon. The Moon's orbit is tilted with respect to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, so the three bodies don't line up every month.

The idea of the quarters of the Moon always used to confuse me. I couldn't quite see what looked like a half moon as the first quarter. Instead of considering the shapes that we see, we have to think of the whole cycle of phases divided into four quarters. It begins with the new Moon, and a quarter of the way through you have the waxing (growing) half Moon. A second quarter gives you a full Moon. Etc.

But it's still confusing, because these days we usually only use this terminology for the first and last quarters.
1. At the end of the first quarter, you end up with a half-illuminated Moon.
2. At the end of the second quarter you have a full Moon.
3. At the end of the third quarter it's another half Moon, but it's on the opposite side to the first quarter.
There's still another week to go until the end of the cycle, so I don't know how the third quarter also gets labeled as the last quarter. Mysteries abound.

The Moon's orbit isn't circular, so the Moon isn't always the same distance from Earth. This diagram shows the apogee and perigee. Apogee is where it's farthest from Earth and perigee is where it's nearest. These distances vary from month to month.

However the Moon's orbit is more nearly circular than the diagram shows. It's exaggerated to show the idea more clearly.

This is part of the reason why tides vary from day to day, right? How does the moon influence the super-big tides at the Bay of Fundy?

I've been to the Bay of Fundy; the tide is amazing.