The Moon’s distance from Earth varies, but it it generally WITHIN a quarter of a million miles.
Here is the “technical stuff” behind “quarter million”. And one of the best pictorial demonstrations I have yet seen, of why “super moon” is actually a thing.
Lunar distance (LD or {\textstyle \Delta _{\oplus L}}), also called Earth–Moon distance, Earth–Moon characteristic distance, or distance to the Moon, is a unit of measure in astronomy. It is the average distance from the center of Earth to the center of the Moon. More technically, it is the mean semi-major axis of the geocentric lunar orbit. It may also refer to the time-averaged distance between the centers of the Earth and the Moon, or less commonly, the instantaneous Earth–Moon distance. The lunar distance is approximately 400 thousand kilometres (250 thousand miles).[1]
The mean semi-major axis has a value of 384,402 km (238,856 mi).[2] The time-averaged distance between Earth and Moon centers is 385,000.6 km (239,228.3 mi). The actual distance varies over the course of the orbit of the Moon, from 356,500 km (221,500 mi) at the perigee to 406,700 km (252,700 mi) at apogee, resulting in a differential range of 50,200 km (31,200 mi).[3]
Lunar distance is commonly used to express the distance to near-Earth object encounters.[4] Lunar distance is also an important astronomical datum; the precision of this measurement to a few parts in a trillion has useful implications for testing gravitational theories such as general relativity,[5] and for refining other astronomical values such as Earth mass,[6] Earth radius,[7] and Earth’s rotation.[8] The measurement is also useful in characterizing the lunar radius, the mass of the Sun and the distance to the Sun.
Millimeter-precision measurements of the lunar distance are made by measuring the time taken for light to travel between LIDAR stations on the Earth and retroreflectors placed on the Moon. The Moon is spiraling away from the Earth at an average rate of 3.8 cm (1.5 in) per year, as detected by the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment.[9][10][11] By coincidence, the diameter of corner cubes in retroreflectors on the Moon is also 3.8 cm.[12][13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)
Well, we just passed a quarter of a million posts, and it turns out that I made the quarter millionth one:
It was on THIS thread of Daughn’s:
20190909 KAG Rally Thread!
That was a fun thread! And very fitting that it was a Trump Rally!
LINK: https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/09/09/20190909-kag-rally-thread/comment-page-4/#comment-250000
We’ve come a long ways. We’re still kind of a mom-and-pop operation, but great things happen here.
Hmmmm. Where have I heard THAT before? *wink*
It is a genuine pleasure to spend time with you all here, helping to not only Make America Great Again, and to KEEP Making America Great, but also – very importantly – to Keep America Great! That will be the task of patriots long after we go to those balcony seats for the best view in the house. So let’s keep on making THEIR job as easy as we can.
Have a great day, people!
W
