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The Moon is the Earth‘s only natural satellite and the second brightest object in Earth’s sky. Despite the fact that the face of the moon in the night sky is familiar to the human eye, to admire its mysterious beauty is endless. For this Infographic, RIA-Novosti asked qualified experts on how one should observe the Moon, and what one should use for this purpose.
The Moon was an object of human interest since ancient times, and the subject of early research. Hipparchos was one of the first researchers of this light in the night sky, in the 2nd century BC. He deduced the Moon’s size, and discovered some of the peculiarities of its motion across the sky. Klaudios Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) developed Hipparchos’ findings, including his research on the study of the Moon in his famous book Almagest. Astronomers drew up lunar charts after the invention of the telescope. The first of these scientists was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who was also a theologian. He published his work in 1651; he was the first who called the large dark areas on the surface of the moon “seas”, the term we use to this day. Riccioli named many of the craters and lunar features after famous scientists such as Platon (Plato), Aristoteles (Aristotle), and Archimedes, and, over time, researchers added craters named after Vladimir Vernadsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Ivan Pavlov.
22 September 2012
RIA-Novosti
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