Ruth Ann Riviere, age 11, of Roanoke, Ill. for her question:
What is the Man in the Moon?
The full moon certainly seems to have a face; ‑ a big sorrowful face with uplifted eyes and round open mouth. No wonder people said there was a poor old man in the moon! I’ve have all seen his sad, ghostly face, Or have you? Of course not. We know that the man‑in‑the‑moon is just a fanciful idea. But knowing the truth about it does not spoil the; fun of the: fancy one bit.
When you look carefully, you can see that the face on the full moon is made up of patches of light and shade. Through a telescope, you see that the surface of the moon is far from smooth. There arc tall mountains, hollows and deep round scars. The sun is shinning full force; onto the uneven face of the full moon.. find sunshine casts shadows. We can see the sunny patches and the shady patches from the faraway earth. It is they that sketch out for us the face of the man in the moon.
The geography of the moon was studied and named long ago. In fact it was adorned with fancy Latin names before it was .fully understood. The shady hollows which form the dark patches on the moons face were believed to be oceans of water. They were called maria, which is the Latin name for seas, The seas were even given characters ‑ serene, rainy, tranquil and hurricane. Now, of course, we know that there are no oceans on the moon. The dark areas are low plains in relation to high mountains which catch the sunshine. But the original names still stand,
Mare Ibrium, or the Rainy Sea, is the dark round patch which plays the role of the man‑in‑the‑moon's right eye ‑ that is the eye facing your left eye as you gaze at the full moon. Two round, so‑called seas blur together to form the moons left eye. They are Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis, the Serene and the Tranquil Seas. Several so‑called seas merge together to form the moons wide open mouth. One of them is named Oceanus Procellarium, or Hurricane Ocean.
The early astronomers had more luck in naming the shiny patche=s on the face of the moon. They called them mountains, which is what they are, high mountains and plateaus catching the full glare of the sun. Some of them were named for mountain ranges on earth. The. Caucasus Mountains and the Alps from the shiny spots of highland on the pimply forehead of the man‑in the‑moon.The 1ippennins form a ridge between the eyes, The shiny chin and left cheek are formed by the moon's Leibnitz., Altai and Pyrennes mountains:.
Some of the mountains of the moon are far, far higher than their namesakes on earth. They range from smallish hills to peaks higher than our Mount Everest. In addition to the low lying plains and the giant mountains the face of the moon is scarred with steep sided round holes. Some 30.,000 of them have been charted ranging from 50 to 150 miles in diameter. At least one of them is almost six miles deep ‑ deep enough to bury Mount Everest. These strange round pits are the mysterious craters of the moon,