Man has always been fascinated by space and the planets that surround the earth. Initially our focus fell on the object nearest to us, the moon. But, once we had conquered the moon through the Apollo space program, attention turned to planets further afield.
The moon still provides some interesting facts, some of which are not commonly known. We do know that the moon is responsible for creating our tides through it's gravitational pull and that it has no atmosphere at all.
But few people know that the moon is bigger than the ex-planet, Pluto, and were it to be orbiting the sun instead of the earth, it too would be called a planet.
Further, the moon's size and distance combination lead to an amazing effect. The moon is some 400 times closer to the earth than the sun, but is also coincidentally 400 times smaller. This perfect ratio means that the sun and moon appear to be the same size when viewed from earth.
The ultimate result of this fact is that during a solar eclipse, when the moon comes between the earth and the sun, the moon perfectly obscures the sun, leading to a perfect total solar eclipse.
