The moon is the brightest object in the Earth’s night sky. It is what gives off light on the other side of the Earth that doesn’t face the Sun. It doesn’t have internal heat and just radiates the light that comes from the Sun. It is also the only celestial object, aside from the Earth, that human beings had set foot on.

The formation of the moon, according to the ‘Big Whack’ theory, was caused by the collision of the Earth with a planet-sized object. During the crash, a small part of the Earth in the form of a cloud of dust particles disengaged from the Earth and started to orbit around it. The cloud then turned into several rocks and then gathered together forming the moon. The rapid motion of these bodies caused extreme heat and turned the conjoined parts into one ball of magma, which cooled down and solidified.

Almost everything about the moon, the Earth’s sole satellite, has been learned and almost every human adult knows what the moon looks like, from afar and up close. It is well known that the surface of the Moon is not smooth. From the Earth and without using a telescope, a human should be able to see light and dark areas on the moon’s surface. The light areas are rocky, cratered and uneven high grounds, which are called ‘Terrae’. Terrae is the Latin word for lands. These highlands are part of the crust of the moon and can be compared to the solid part of the Earth. The earth’s land area has changed over the years, resulting to mountains, valleys or canyons. The Earth’s weather and the movement of the Earth’s molten mantle, which lies underneath the crust, brought these changes.

The Terrae of the moon, has also changed over billions of years, but the transformation was not caused by its internal composition. The craters on the moon’s surface were caused by impacts made by asteroids, comets and meteoroids. After the moon was formed, asteroids and other objects that move in space have attacked it. There are numerous craters on the moon and many have diameters that exceed 20 miles. The largest crater on the moon is called the South Pole-Aitken Basin and it is 1,550 miles in diameter.

The dark areas on the moon are called Maria, which is the latin word for seas. It is because of the smoothness of these parts. Although they are also cratered, volcanic eruptions on the moon partly flooded these craters with lava, which eventually cooled down and turned to rock.
The craters on the moon have accumulated over billions of years. Most have been named by the International Astronomical Union.

Craters can become present on any solid astronomical body and may be caused when a significantly smaller object crash into it. Craters are known to be the major land feature of many solid objects in the solar system. These include the moon, asteroids and other small moons in the solar system. Ganymede and Callisto, which are among Jupiter’s largest moons, are also heavily cratered.

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