The Moon over Baku, Azerbaijan.
Slivers, halves, and full moons… humans have tracked the cycle of the celestial body for millennia.
Yet the familiar movements of the Moon have not always been those we observe each night in modern times.
The Moon over Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo:[email protected]/Depositphotos)
The reflector is made of fused silica half-cubes, called corner cubes, mounted in a square aluminum panel.
Lunar ranging involves sending a laser beam through an optical telescope, Dr. Jean Dickeysaid in 1994.
Through this process, NASA calculated the distance between Earth and the Moon at a given time.
An artist’s impression of the closer Moon about four billion years ago. (Photo: Tim Bertelink viaWikimedia Commons,CC BY-SA 4.0)
The distance between the two expands by 3.8 centimeters per year.
By examining ancient, eroded sediment layers in Australia, the researchers were able to examine aMilankovitch cycle.
Milankovitch cycles are natural cycles that have changed over time and affect the reception of sunlight.
The Earthrise as viewed from the Moon in December of 1968. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
These include the length of Earth’s orbit and the tilt of its axis.
They also include the climatic precession cycle.
As Earth spins, its axis wobbles in a circle, science writerTereza Pultarova explained.
This effect is called axial precession.
In the future, it will point somewhere else.
Its quite amazing that past solar system dynamics can be determined from small variations in ancient sedimentary rocks.
We now need other reliable data and new modeling approaches to trace the evolution of the Moon through time.
An artist’s impression of the closer Moon about four billion years ago.
The Earthrise as viewed from the Moon in December of 1968.
