the.com/selenology
The science of obsessing over a rock that controls Earth's tides from afar.
means The scientific study of the Moon — its surface, composition, geology, and history.
from From Selene, the Greek goddess and personification of the Moon, plus the familiar suffix '-logy' (study of), from Greek 'logos,' meaning word or reason. Selene drove her glowing chariot across the night sky in Greek myth; the same name lingers in the element selenium, christened by Berzelius because it pairs naturally with tellurium, named for the Earth. So selenology is, quite literally, goddess-of-the-Moon-ology.
- named for
- Selene, Greek goddess of the moon
- older than spaceflight
- Galileo mapped lunar craters by telescope in 1609
- moonquakes exist
- Apollo seismometers caught the moon rumbling
- drifting away
- The moon retreats 3.8 centimeters yearly
- far side
- Humans never saw it until 1959
lunar reconnaissance orbiter — nasa spacecraft launched 2009, mapping moon's surface at 0.5m resolution
apollo 11 samples — 47.5 kg of moon rocks collected july 1969, studied for lunar geology
chang'e 5 mission — chinese lunar lander 2020, returned 1.731 kg of moon soil to earth