dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (12/18/85)
This is the anniversary of the first photo of the moon ever taken with a telescope. More -- when we come back. December 18 A Photo of the Moon The moon is at first quarter tonight. It's up until around midnight -- and looks like half of a lighted circle in our sky. In fact, it looks like a half moon -- but we call it a quarter because it's one-quarter of the way around in its orbit of Earth, as reckoned from new moon to new moon. Also, tonight we're really seeing a lighted quarter of the moon -- another quarter shines just as brightly in the direction of space opposite Earth. A full half of the moon is always in sunlight. The different lunar phases during the month are descriptions of how much WE view of the lighted half of the moon -- whether we see the whole thing, as at full moon, or just a sliver, as we do when the moon is a crescent. During the last five centuries our overall perspective on the moon has changed. Galileo -- using a telescope -- was the first person to record any details on the lunar surface. Then on this date in the year 1849, the first photograph of the moon was obtained through a telescope. William Bond got the first proof available for anyone to see of what Galileo had claimed two hundred years earlier -- that the moon has mountains and broad valleys -- that it's a world hauntingly similar to the Earth. The moon -- at first quarter in tonight's sky -- showing half its lighted face toward Earth. All you have to do to see it is look outside. Script by Diana Hadley and Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin