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Moonrise by the Sea.Biologists as well as artists and poets have long thought about the Moon's influence on living creatures. The lunar effect is a purported correlation between specific stages of the roughly 29.5-day lunar cycle and behavior and physiological changes in living beings on Earth, including humans.
Opposition surge from the retroreflective lunar soil brightens the area around Buzz Aldrin's shadow during Apollo 11 (photo by Neil Armstrong).. The opposition surge (sometimes known as the opposition effect, opposition spike or Seeliger effect [1]) is the brightening of a rough surface, or an object with many particles, when illuminated from directly behind the observer.
Reports of transient lunar phenomena range from foggy patches to permanent changes of the lunar landscape. Cameron [2] classifies these as (1) gaseous, involving mists and other forms of obscuration, (2) reddish colorations, (3) green, blue or violet colorations, (4) brightenings, and (5) darkening.
A simple way of demonstrating that the effect is an illusion is to hold a small pebble (say, 0.33 inches or 8.4 millimetres wide) at arm's length (25 inches or 64 centimetres) with one eye closed, positioning the pebble so that it covers (eclipses) the full Moon when high in the night sky.
The tidal locking effect is also experienced by the larger body A, but at a slower rate because B's gravitational effect is weaker due to B's smaller mass. For example, Earth's rotation is gradually being slowed by the Moon, by an amount that becomes noticeable over geological time as revealed in the fossil record. [8]
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth.
This effect could be further enhanced during the portion of the Moon's orbit where it passes through Earth's magnetotail, part of the magnetic field of the Moon. [5] On the terminator there could be significant horizontal electric fields forming between the day and night areas, resulting in horizontal dust transport—a form of "Moon storm". [4 ...
Its effect on the Moon's longitude has an odd-appearing period of about 31.8 days. This can be represented in a number of ways, for example as the result of an approximate 6-monthly libration in the position of perigee, with an accompanying 6-monthly pulsation in the size of the Moon's orbital eccentricity. [ 40 ]