moon

If it was a new atlas I suppose it would be 'new moon'.

Bilby, that is so beautiful. Thanks for sharing it.

"Sometimes the moon would gleam whitely above us and my brothers would say, 'Coimhead, lochran digh nam bochd,''Look, the lamp of the poor.' And sometimes at the appearance of the new moon Calum would bow or almost curtsey in the old way and repeat the verses taught to him by the old Calum Ruaidh men of the country:
Glory forever to thee so bright
Thou moon so white of this very night;
Thouself forever thou dost endure
As the glorious lantern of the poor."
- 'No Great Mischief', Alistair MacLeod.

Jane Smiley on the Apollo mission.

Nice work kewpid! I figured someWordie would have the skills to deliver the unvarnished truth.

Not true :(

There was a full moon on 10 February 1865. February 1866 did not have a full moon. More recently, there was no full moon in February 1999. Link.

I have it on the dubious authority of forwarded email that February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon. Prolly maybe?

Here's a rule of thumb I made up for figuring out whether the moon's waxing or waning: "If the light's on the Right, it's arRiving. If the Light's on the Left, it's Leaving". You've got to be able to rotate the moon in your imagination (or tilt your head) slightly if the illuminated portion seems to be mostly on the bottom of the moon's disc.

From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me--
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me throutg the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced, my shadow tumbled after.
As long as I know we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.

...shall good will ever be secure?
I watch the long River of Stars.

--from the Chinese

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0703/tle_03032007_60_schedler.jpg

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

The moon is traveling about 2300 MPH in its orbit around the Earth. The Earth, spinning on its axis at about 1000 MPH, is traveling roughly 67,000 MPH around the sun, while the sun is zooming at 560,000 MPH around the hub of the Milky Way (the last time our sun was in it's present relative position on its galactic circuit, dinosaurs walked the earth!). And the Milky Way is going someanywhere even faster. Think about it: all that rushing around! And Sir Isaac, sitting under an apple tree was struck by an apple...so, where do you suppose IT was going? Well, it flew right into Sir Isaac's brain and became The Calculus, and our view of the cosmos has never been the same since.

See galaxy for more.