Moonset Over Kona

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The Moon Is Awesome – Both To Viewers And To Astrophysicists: Just how did the moon form? The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact suggests that the Moon formed out of the debris left over from a collision between Earth and an astronomical body the size of Mars, approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

Everyone knows how awesome Kona sunsets are… But moonsets are stunning as well. As a bonus, included are a sunrise / sunset chart and a couple of sunset images.

Facts About The Moon: NASA offers comprehensive information about the moon:

With a radius of 1,079.6 miles (1,737.5 kilometers), the moon is less than a third the width of Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, the moon would be about as big as a coffee bean.
The moon is farther away from Earth than most people realize. The moon is an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away. That means 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between Earth and the moon.
The moon is slowly moving away from Earth, getting about an inch farther away each year.
The moon makes a complete orbit around Earth in 27 Earth days and rotates or spins at that same rate, or in that same amount of time. Because Earth is moving as well — rotating on its axis as it orbits the sun — from our perspective, the moon appears to orbit us every 29 days.

What Causes The Moon Phases? NASA offers comprehensive about why we have different phases of the moon, i.e., a crescent moon, a half moon a full moon, and everything in between.

We always see the same side of the Moon, because as the Moon revolves around the Earth, the Moon rotates so that the same side is always facing the Earth. But the Moon still looks a little different every night. Sometimes the entire face glows brightly. Sometimes we can only see a thin crescent. Other times the Moon seems to disappear entirely. As the bright parts of the Moon appear to change shape during the month, each stage of the change is called a phase, and each phase carries its own name.

This chart shows why this happens. The center ring shows the Moon as it revolves around the Earth, as seen from above the north pole. Sunlight illuminates half the Earth and half the Moon at all times. But as the Moon orbits around the Earth, at some points in its orbit the sunlit part of the Moon can be seen from the Earth, and at other points, we can only see the parts of the Moon that are in shadow. The outer ring shows what we see on the Earth during each corresponding part of the Moon’s orbit.