How to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon

The ancient Greeks did it , and you could too . bump out how some easily evident facts allow you to appraise the approximative length from the Earth to the Moon .

One of the hardest parts of calculating space in space is the difficultness discover reference points . The size or space of objects on Earth can be backbreaking to estimate , but they occupy a landscape which can be measured , providing a jumping - off spot . The Sun Myung Moon pass up a few clues — it ’s clearly closer than the Sun or the asterisk , but it ’s still blow in a nothingness that ’s hard to measure .

The length to the moon was evaluate , or at least approximated , over 2000 years ago , by our old supporter , the Greeks . They ’d alreadyfigured out the circumferenceand consequently the diameter of the earth , providing the one infrangible identification number on which to base the residue . After that , it ’s geometry .

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https://gizmodo.com/measuring-the-circumference-of-the-world-5587641

Many people have held up a round object and let it block the Sun . Most of the time , it ’s not an exact fit . A piece of Sun peeks through , or a little of the surround area is jam out . When a circular object is held up in front of the Sun , it make a cone of darkness that tapers down to one point . At that one head , the object block out all of the Sun , and nothing else . That point , on Earth , is 108 times the diameter of the target . A beach lump will create a shadow 108 beach glob long , which at the furthest item will draw a blank out the Sun completely . A penny will create a tail 108 pennies long . The Earth will make a shadow 108 Earth diameters long .

The Moon passes within that shadow during a lunar occultation . So no matter how giving or low the Moon is , it had to pass within 108 Earth diameters of the Earth . In fact , during lunar eclipse , it was observed that the Moon was imperfectly obstruct by the dark of the Earth . The shadower was roughly 2.5 times the width of the Moon .

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But is it a freehanded , far Moon , or a diminished , nigh Sun Myung Moon ? This would have been unsufferable to decide if it were n’t for a happy coincidence . The Moon itself is a size and distance that blocks out the Sun . Like the beach ball and the centime , it creates its own shadow , and that dark terminates on Earth . More importantly , that shadow cease in the same angle that the dark of the Earth does , making them different - sized versions of the same trigon .

The triangles work out like this . The largest is one Earth diameter wide at the stand ( 8,000 international nautical mile ) and 108 Earth diameters tall ( 864,000 miles ) . The small is one Moon diameter blanket and one Moon orbit tall . The metier sized one is 2.5 Moon diameters wide and , since the triangles are proportionate , 2.5 Moon orbit marvellous . bring the height of the intermediate - sized one to the small-scale one and you get 3.5 Moon orbits , which is the tiptop of the large triangle .

In other words , the length to the Moon is 864,000 dissever by 3.5 , or around 247,000 miles . According to Universe Today , the distance to the Moon is 239,000 miles , prove once again that the Greeks were impudent .

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