The Earth-Moon System

“When it is darkest, men see the stars.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

1 The Moon: Science and Mystery

From the earliest times men have been fascinated by the Moon, a cold desolate beauty, calm, serene, a light for the dark, wise and knowing, a witness...

2 Elusive Answers

Indeed it sounds like a standard exercise to establish the story of how the Earth-Moon came to be, then we can leave it and get on with the Big-Bang...

3 Calculating the Past

The Moon is very slowly receding from Earth it is predicted even by elementary physics and can be measured. This is a simple fact and is the result...

4 Model of the Moon-Earth

We assume the Earth and the Moon are solid spheres of respective known masses as well as moments of inertia. The Moon orbit is circular and the...

Orbits and Timed Rotations

Suppose we had a situation where the orbital angular velocity equals that of rotational spin in some two-body system such as you have in the earth-...

A drifting moon

The other day someone wrote to a local radio program he wanted to know whether the Moon rotates (spins) around it's own axis. The Astronomer said yes...