Abstract
The aim of the present introductory chapter will be to introduce to the reader the Moon as a celestial body, and to review its basic properties such as the distance, size, and mass, the knowledge of which will constitute a necessary prerequisite for proper understanding of the structure and other physical characteristics of the Moon to be discussed in the main part of this book. To the astronomer the Moon has indeed been a friend of old standing; and at least a rudimentary knowledge of its motion goes very far back in the history of mankind on this planet; for since prehistory times the waxing and waning of lunar phases and the light changes accompanying them provided the first astronomical basis for the reckoning of the time. Whenever we go sufficiently far back in the history of almost any primitive civilization, we find them invariably dependent on the lunar, rather than the solar, calendar: the month became a unit of time long before the concept of the year emerged from accumulating observations; and the Moon as the graceful carrier of this knowledge thus gained entrance, as a female deity, to the pantheons of most ancient nations.
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Bibliographical Notes
Modern determinations of the mass of the Moon from accelerations of man-made spacecraft moving in its gravitational field and observed by means of highly accurate Doppler tracking have added at least an order of magnitude to their precision over its previous determinations by purely astronomical methods. For a determination of the lunar mass from the observed perturbations exerted by it on the motion of Mariner 2, cf. Anderson and Null (1963); for results based on Rangers 6 and 7, cf. Schurmeier et al. (1964); while those deduced from the trajectories of Rangers 8 an 9, or of Mariner 4 are still unpublished. For a determination of the lunar distance cf. also O’Keefe and Anderson (1952) or Fischer (1962).
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© 1966 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Kopal, Z. (1966). Basic Facts: Distance, Size, and Mass. In: An Introduction to the Study of the Moon. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6320-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6320-2_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-5850-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-6320-2
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