BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Moon Doodles *new article*

Our nearest neighbor in space is on show for us most nights – and some days. There are several Google doodles celebrating our relationship with the Moon.

Moon Doodles

Total Lunar Eclipse

While the eclipse was in progress, the doodle was following it. But for the rest of the day, there was an animation showing what a total lunar eclipse looks like - speeded up, of course. This is a youtube video of it.

Water on the Moon

When this discovery was announced, Google asked artist Jennifer Hom to have a "doodle sketched, drafted, finished, and live on all our homepages in four hours.” She didn't have time for an all-singing all-dancing animation, but made the Google logo and the Moon delightfully aquatic . It also shows NASA's LCROSS probe hitting the Moon.

Yuri Kondratyuk's 115th Birthday

Over 50 years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, Ukranian engineer and mathematician Aleksandr Shargei - later to be known as Yuri Kondratyuk - worked out the most efficient way of sending a spacecraft to the Moon and bringing it back again. It wasn't widely known, but NASA aerospace engineer John C. Houbolt knew it and against some virulent opposition, persuaded NASA. It's known as the LOR (lunar orbit rendezvous), or "Kondratyuk's route".

.
Although it's rare for the Strawberry Moon to fall on the June solstice, the solstice occurs every year. In 2020 there were two doodles. The northern hemisphere has its summer solstice in June, but the southern hemisphere has its winter solstice in June.