This week’s word is…
Selenophile
For as long as I can remember, I have felt a massive love and attraction to the Moon.
On nights with a full moon I can invariably be found perched at a window or outside… just looking at it.
It is mysterious, glowing, beautiful.
I have been known to howl at a full Moon, and I don’t care who knows it! The OH is very good about calling me out to see one when he takes the dogs out at night for their last loo break.
My Twitter handle is MoonlightDancer, inspired by a gorgeous song by Thin Lizzy called Dancin’ In The Moonlight. Listen to it’s lyrics and be transported back to your teens.
Think of the beautiful words with the word moon in them… Moonset, moonrise, moonlit, moonlight, moonbeams, moonshine, moonstruck, honeymoon…
So many songs have been inspired by the Moon… Fly Me To The Moon, Moon River, Harvest Moon, Moondance, Moonshadow, Bark At The Moon… I could go on.
One frosty, clear, winter night I was incredibly lucky to get a shot of the Moon on an iPhone camera.
Now for a few bits of trivia about the Moon:
Formed 4.6 BILLION years ago, the Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite.
I think most people know that the Moon causes our tidal rise and fall, and that also that humans weigh less on the Moon thanks to it’s smaller mass and weaker gravity. Hence the “giant steps are what you take”, (The Police).
I think I’d like to go there and weigh 1/6th of my current weight…
Did you know the Moon is actually drifting away from us? By about 3.8cm, every year. They, (the boffins), estimate that this will continue for approximately another 50 billion years, resulting in it taking 47 days to orbit us instead of than it’s current cycle of 27.3 days. One result of this is that once it moves further away we will never again see a total solar eclipse. Will there still be people around to care I wonder? As the Moon influences our weather and climate, aswell as the tides, I guess there will be implications for wildlife, migrating birds and sea animals. I’m getting a bit depressed now… moving along…
The Moon has its version of earthquakes, called quite delightfully in my opinion, moonquakes. The boffins, (them again), speculate that the Moon, just like Earth, has molten core, and Lunar astronauts have used seismographs and observed cracks in the surface as a result of these quakes.
Another interesting fact is, (sorry to break it to you Pink Floyd), there is no dark side of the Moon. The side facing away from Earth receives the same amount of sunlight as we do but has only ever been seen by spacecraft.
Furthermore, the Moon has a very thin atmosphere and a footprint can lie undisturbed in the dust for centuries. Isn’t that an amazing idea? A footprint that can last hundreds of years… For me, that brings to mind a wonderfully bittersweet image.
There are other ideas around the Moon that are quite fun…
That is makes you crazy… the word lunacy and lunatic derive from the Roman goddess of the Moon, Luna, who rode her chariot across the sky at night. Crazy lady…
There is a similar myth that the Moon controls female fertility. Perhaps this is because the lunar cycle and the menstrual cycle are of similar length resulted in early civilisation associating the reproductive cycle with the phases of the Moon.
Then we have the marvellous conspiracy theories…
That the Nazi’s had a base on the Moon! Some people even believed that Hilter faked his death and fled to live in a sub-terrainian lunar hideaway… don’t you just LOVE people!?
One of the most famous conspiracy theories about the Moon is of course that the Apollo mission was faked by NASA. After years of being questioned about it, in 2002, Buzz Aldrin, aged in his 70’s at the time, finally snapped and threw a punch at a conspiracy theorist! I guess it just got too old for him…
I love the Moon… I think of ‘it’ as Her… perhaps because she is mysterious and beautiful. I love looking up at her on clear nights, letting my mind run free.
I was so lucky one time in Tuscany… The OH and I were having dinner on an amazing outdoor terrace and we started to hear gasps and mutterings from our fellow diners. Suddenly, there were flashes of cameras going and, as we were sitting right at the edge of the balcony, we were in all the shots. We looked over to see what they were all photographing and our breath was truly taken away by the view of a MASSIVE, blood-red Supermoon in front of our eyes, looking so close that you could reach out and touch it. I will never forget that night as we dropped our cutlery and just watched in awestruck wonder at the natural phenomenon before us. We still talk about it to this day.
Our next Full Moon in Ireland is due for July 2nd, but set your reminders for the next Blue Moon on July 31st and the next Supermoon on September 28th.
Finally I will leave you with a photo of my precious Blue Moon roses from my garden, which smell as good as they look. Excuse the Guinness glass… this is Ireland after all!
Kittykat-bitsandbobs 