While the Moon was once thought to hold the key to space exploration, in recent decades, the U.S. has largely turned its sights toward Mars and other celestial bodies instead. In The Value of the Moon, lunar scientist Paul Spudis argues that the U.S. can and should return to the moon in order to remain a world leader in space utilization and development and a participant in and beneficiary of a new lunar economy. Spudis explores three reasons for returning to the Moon: it is close, it is interesting, and it is useful. The proximity of the Moon not only allows for frequent launches, but also control of any machinery we place there. It is interesting because recorded deep on its surface and in its craters is the preserved history of the moon, the sun, and indeed the entire galaxy. And finally, the moon is useful because it is rich with materials and energy. The moon, Spudis argues, is a logical base for further space exploration and even a possible future home for us all. Throughout his work, Spudis incorporates details about man's fascination with the moon and its place in our shared history. He also explores its religious, cultural, and scientific resonance and assesses its role in the future of spaceflight and our national security and prosperity.

The BBC’s “face of space” explores all things lunar in this comprehensive guide to the folklore, facts, and possible futures of our only natural satellite. Have you ever wondered if there are seasons on the moon or if space tourism will ever become widely accessible? So has Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, astronomer and host of the BBC’s docuseries, The Sky at Night. In this lucidly written guide, Aderin-Pocock takes readers on a fascinating lunar journey. Aderin-Pocock begins with a basic overview—unpacking everything from the moon’s topography and composition to its formation and orbit around the Earth. She examines beliefs held by ancient civilizations, the technology that allowed for the first moon landing, a brief history of moongazing, and how the moon has influenced culture throughout the years. Looking to the future, she delves into the pros and cons of continued space travel and exploration. Throughout the book are sidebars, graphs, and charts to enhance the facts as well as black-and-white illustrations of the moon and stars.

The only work to date to collect data gathered during the American and Soviet missions in an accessible and complete reference of current scientific and technical information about the Moon.

An ancient Hebrew creation story.

The discovery of a gradual acceleration in the moon’s mean motion by Edmond Halley in the last decade of the seventeenth century led to a revival of interest in reports of astronomical observations from antiquity. These observations provided the only means to study the moon’s ‘secular acceleration’, as this newly-discovered acceleration became known. This book contains the first detailed study of the use of ancient and medieval astronomical observations in order to investigate the moon’s secular acceleration from its discovery by Halley to the establishment of the magnitude of the acceleration by Richard Dunthorne, Tobias Mayer and Jérôme Lalande in the 1740s and 1750s. Making extensive use of previously unstudied manuscripts, this work shows how different astronomers used the same small body of preserved ancient observations in different ways in their work on the secular acceleration. In addition, this work looks at the wider context of the study of the moon’s secular acceleration, including its use in debates of biblical chronology, whether the heavens were made up of æther, and the use of astronomy in determining geographical longitude. It also discusses wider issues of the perceptions and knowledge of ancient and medieval astronomy in the early-modern period. This book will be of interest to historians of astronomy, astronomers and historians of the ancient world.

The Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold, published in 1551, were the first set of astronomical tables to use the Copernican model of the solar system. Reinhold left a detailed account of his derivation of the parameters used in these tables in his "Commentarius in opus Revolutionum Copernici". The present work is based on an analysis of this unpublished manuscript, which was rediscovered early in this century. In particular, this work analyses the geocentric distances of the sun and moon as found in Ptolemy's Almagest, in both the manuscript version and the Nuremberg edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus, in Reinhold's commentary on the Almagest, and in Reinhold's commentary on this section of De Revolutionibus. Chapter one contains a detailed analysis of the lunar distance, and chapter two concerns the apparent diameters of the sun, moon and shadow. The Ptolemaic method, which is the model for Copernicus and Reinhold, requires the determination of these quantities as a preliminary to the calculation of the solar distance, which is treated in chapter three. The fourth chapter is a brief analysis of the relative magnitudes of the sun, moon and earth, which Ptolemy, Copernicus and Reinhold discuss after they have reached values of the lunar and solar distances. The final chapter concerns an application of the distances - the solar and lunar parallaxes and diameters.