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3: Cycles of the Moon DID ANYONE EVER WARN YOU, “Don’t stare at the moon—you’ll go crazy”?1 For centuries, the superstitious have associated the moon with insanity. The word lunatic comes from a time when even doctors thought that the insane were “moonstruck.” It is a Common Misconception that people tend to act crazy at full moon. Actual statistical studies of records from schools, prisons, hospitals, police departments, and so on show that it isn’t true. There are always a few people who misbehave; the moon has nothing to do with it. The moon is so bright and its cycles through the sky are so dramatic people simply expect it to influence them in some way. In fact, the moon produces some of the most beautiful and exciting phenomena visible to the naked eye. Not only does it cycle through its phases, but it occasionally produces dramatic eclipses of the sun and moon. |
Guidepost
In the previous chapter, you studied the cycle of day and night and the cycle of the seasons. Now you are ready to study the brightest object in the night sky. The moon moves rapidly against the background of stars, changing its shape and occasionally producing strange events called eclipses. This chapter will help you answer four essential questions about Earth’s satellite:
- Why does the moon go through phases?
- What causes a lunar eclipse?
- What causes a solar eclipse?
- How can eclipses be predicted?
Understanding the phases of the moon and eclipses will exercise your imagination, and help you answer an important question about how science works:
- How Do We Know? How do scientists get from raw data to an understanding of nature?
Once you have a 21st-century understanding of your world and its motion, you will be ready to read the next chapter, where you will see how Renaissance astronomers analyzed what they saw in the sky, used their imagination, and came to a revolutionary conclusion—that Earth is a planet.
Chapter 3
Cycles of the Moon
Even a man who is pure in heart /
And says his prayers by night /
May become a wolf when the wolfbane
blooms /
And the moon shines full and bright.
Proverb from old Wolfman movies
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