05 The MoonWalk AUGUST 2009

I t is certainly
logical to expect
that when the
Moon is 50 percent
illuminated (at First or
Last Quarter phase;
also sometimes called
the "half-moon"), that it
would be shining only half as bright as a
Full Moon. Indeed, if the Moon's disk was flat
like a white piece of paper or a projection
screen, then its surface brightness would be the
same all over and this would be true.
But certainly, this is not the case. The Moon is
a sphere, and the amount of reflected light
from the Sun per unit of Moon area decreases
toward the lunar terminator (the dividing line
between the bright and shaded regions). Near
and especially along the terminator, mountains
and boulders strewn across the lunar landscape cast innumerable
shadows. This gives the effect of the Moon appearing brightest near and
along its edge, but greyer towarsd the terminator.
In contrast, at Full Moon, the Sun is shining on the Moon from
nearly the same direction as we are viewing from the Earth. That is, the
Sun is behind us as we view the Moon. (It is directly behind during a total
lunar eclipse.) This means that all the shadows cast by mountains on the
Moon are directly behind the objects casting them -- and thus are not
visible to us.
Believe it or not, only about 2.4 days from Full Moon does the
Moon shine half as bright as when it's full. And when the Moon is at First
Quarter phase, it is actually only 1/11 as bright as full!
At Last Quarter it's even dimmer - 1/12 - because of the greater
visible area of the dark maria (or lunar "seas") on its illuminated portion.

How did the

L
ike nearly every large
Moon’s face objects that orbits close
got locked? to a more massive one,
the moon has tidally locked
rotation: it shows Earth the same
face. But, a new study hints that a different face
was locked to us in the distant past.
Mark Wieczorek and Mathieu Le Feuvre,
researchers at the Institute of Earth Physics of
Paris, found that the Moon's eastern hemisphere
has a statistical excess of big and very old impact

basins. Yet the Moon's current orientation argues for just the opposite: its
western side, which faces forward as the Moon moves around Earth,
should encounter the most impactors and get hit harder.
To knock the moon out of lock and flip it front to back would have
taken an object at least 30 miles wide striking a glancing blow fast enough
to create a basin a couple hundred miles across. Of the known lunar
basins, six qualify. The best candidate seems to be Mare Smythii, large
enough to occupy 350 miles across, on the Moon's equator and currently at
the lunar eastern limb.
The putative strike
must have happened
at least 3.8 billion
years ago, when the
Moon was roughly
only half as far away
as it is now. After
about a year tidal
torques would have
regained control and
stopped this merry-
go-round. According to scientists, it would be only a matter of chance as
to whether the same face of the Moon would be directed towards the Earth
as before the impact.”