9 - The Moon

Summary

I was never dazzled by moonlight till now; but as it rose from behind the Mont Blanc du Tacul, the Mont Blanc summit just edged with its light, the full Moon almost blinded me; it burst forth into the sky like a vast star. … A meteor fell over the Dôme as the Moon rose. Now it is so intensely bright that I cannot see the Mont Blanc underneath it; the form is lost in its light.

John Ruskin, Diary entry, 28 June 1844, The Diaries of John Ruskin, eds. Joan Evans and John Noward Whitehouse, 3 vols, Clarendon Press, 1956–59

Observing the Moon

The Moon is probably the only celestial object, apart from the Sun, that we can all recognise without being prompted. It is large and bright enough to catch our eye unexpectedly, and regularly goes though a remarkable sequence of phases that have no parallel in nature.

There was a time when the Moon played an important part in people's lives. Moonlight made activity possible outdoors after sunset. The first calendars were based on a lunation, the time taken for a complete cycle of lunar phases, from one new Moon to the next. In fact, the word ‘Moon’ is derived from an archaic term for measurement.