THE EARTH'S MOON

THE EARTH'S MOON is the National Geographic Society's well-known moonmap which was made in 1969 as a supplement to the February 1969 issue of N.G. (the article HOW WE MAPPED THE MOON, by David W. Cook; National Geographic staff cartographer). In 2003 a revised edition was made, and in 2014 there was a reprint of this revised edition.

This page is an exploration and investigation of the 2003 edition of THE EARTH'S MOON (by Danny Caes; the Sherlock Holmes of Selenography).

First of all, this 2003 edition is a very beautiful moonmap printed on stiff semi-gloss waterproof paper. The nomenclature of the named formations on both the moon's near and far sides look complete, although the alphabetic gazetteer (of named formations) near the left and right margins is far from complete, which is understandable, otherwise this map would look like a very large dull looking list with two small lunar hemispheres pushed aside by it...
Near the lower left corner of the map there is a special APOLLO section which shows info on the manned lunar missions (Apollo 8 to Apollo 17, sans Apollo 9 because this was an Earth-orbital mission to test the docking procedure of both the Command/Service Module and the Lunar Module).
All info about the motion of the moon around Earth, the distance moon-Earth, the moon's phases throughout a lunation, moon lore, etc... looks the same as the 1969 edition. The drawing of the sizes of other moons (of the planets) compared with Earth's moon, idem...
Here and there, small typographical errors went unnoticed through pre-press activities, and the pronounced ray-systems around farside craters Jackson and Ohm were erroneously omitted. Even more mysterious is the appearance of a (non existing) ray-system around farside crater Robertson, northeast of Ohm! (illustrator Jay L. Inge must somehow have mixed the appearances of both craters Ohm and Robertson, until Robertson got the ray system of Ohm...).

List of typographical errors in the names of surface formations.

• Blot (on the moon's nearside, should be Biot).
• Doiland (on the moon's nearside, should be Dollond).
• Flamstead (in the alphabetic gazetteer, should be Flamsteed).
• Madlar (on the moon's nearside, should be Madler).
• Lacoix (on the moon's nearside, should be Lacroix).
• Lipskiy (name omitted on the farside map, absent at the farside's very central location).
• Promontoria Banat (this might be the only one of the IAU's many disallowed names printed on the map, and why is it not Promontorium?) (yes, I am a nitpicker).
• Ulugh Biegh (on the moon's near side, western limb region, should be Ulugh Beigh).
• Van Vlek (on the moon's nearside, eastern limb region, should be Van Vleck).
• Woliaston (on the moon's nearside, should be Wollaston).
• (no names of dorsa included).
• (several names of large craters are omitted, on the other hand, a number of names of extremely small craters such as Caventou in Mare Imbrium have not escaped the attention of the compilers of this 2003 edition).
• Luna 23 (the location of the impact site of Luna 23 is too much westward, but... still on the floor of Mare Crisium, it should be at the landing site of Luna 24) (one single spot for Luna 23 and Luna 24).

The margins

The upper, lower, left, and right margins of this map show a diversity of words, names, terms, etc..., all related to lunar sciences and the history of spaceflight missions to the moon. I don't know if many people noticed these filled up margins, anyway, if everything goes as planned, the list of these words, names, and terms shall appear here in less than no time, with (hopefully) several additional links to wikipedia pages...
 
 Upper margin (left to right):
  Johann Hevelius, Rendezvous, Earthshine, T Minus 5 and Counting, Blue Moon, Bishop Francis Godwin, Launch Window, The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky (see note), Baily's Beads, Madler and Beer, Foaming Sea, Mary Blagg, Paul W. Gast, Saros, Donald Slayton, Preceding Limb, 25,000 Miles per Hour, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hidden Side, Johann Kepler, Gus Grissom, Mare Annulatum, Galileo's Telescope, Walter Schirra, Lucian of Samosata, Canopus, Hugh Dryden, Lift-Off, Golden Moon, Bay of Rainbows, Mascons, Julius Schmidt, Syzygy, I am Eagle, Ixchel, Sea of Tranquillity, Saturn V, Jules Verne, The Imbrian Event, JPL, Cape Kennedy, Robert Goddard, Nisan, Mount Wilson Observatory, Claude Mellan, Hey Diddle Diddle (see note), Kreep, Barycenter, John Glenn, The Cat and the Fiddle (see note), LH2/LOX.
 Note: "The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle, the Cow Jumped over the Moon" (believe it or not, most adult people only want to hear things like that, even when they observe the moon's craters and mountains through the main telescope of a university's public observatory) (it's as if they don't want to accept the harsh reality of the moon's cratered surface...) (the moon doesn't look like the friendly croissant-with-smiling-face of which we heard talking about during our kindergarten days).
 
 Lower margin (left to right):
  Brick Moon, Sea of Nectar, Sputnik, Zero G, Cavorite, Armalcolite, Hjuki and Bil, Leibnitz Mountains, Midcourse Correction, William Gilbert, Green Cheese, James McDivitt, Cobra Head, Pale Moon, Robert Gilruth, Volcanic Craters, Cayley Formation, Hermann Oberth, Alan Shepard, Astrogeology, Somnium, Cabbage Moon, Diana, Hans Pfaal (see note), Marshall Space Flight Center, Orbiter 5, A OK, Tranquillity Base, Meteoritic Craters, Gordon Cooper, Cyrano De Bergerac, Zap Craters, Line of Apsides, Many Moons, Friendship 7, Anomalistic Period, Brennschluss, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Mare Hyperboreum, 5.250.000.000 Cubic Miles, Cislunar Space, Luna 13, Selenodetic Control, Perilune, Pill of Immortality, Doerfel Mountains, Silvery Moon, Terra Caloris.
 Note: the National Geographic Society's Hans Pfaal shows a typographical error, it should be Hans Pfaall. Only the eye of a stubborn nitpicker could detect an error like this. - DannyCaes Oct 24, 2015
 
 Left margin (bottom to top):
  Command Module, Surveyor 1, Diurnal Libration, Ocean of Storms, ALSEP, Gray Moon, Scott Carpenter, Hunter's Moon, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Lunacy (see note), Regression of the Nodes, Explorer 1, Pavel Popovich, Yerkes Observatory, Molly Brown, Sea of Crises, Voskhod, Roche's Limit, Hornet plus Three, Launch Complex 39, Hypergolics, First Stage Burn, Golden Number, Andrian Nikolayev, October 4 - 1957, Penumbra, Roger Chaffee, International Astronomical Union, Sea of Fertility.
 Note: Lunacy. Even in our (so-called) modern world of nano-technology and digital communication it is very dangerous to talk about earth's satellite (the moon), because it is (and shall always be) related to the nuthouse and psychiatrists (alas). If your hobby has something to do with earth's satellite (the moon), it is wise to keep your mouth shut. Unfortunately I can't do this (read: I don't want to keep my mouth shut), which means, I am a veritable lunatic.
 
 Right margin (top to bottom):
  Zond 5, Tidal Bulge, Moon Maid, Yuri Gagarin, Full Earth, Manned Spacecraft Center, Artemis, Basalt, Ranger 7, Waxing and Waning, Red Moon, Spider and Gumdrop, All Systems Go, Bernard Lovell, Van Allen Radiation Belt, Gemini, Theodore von Karman, Ed White, Ascending Node, Valentina Tereshkova, 2287 Miles per Hour, Cusps, Tycho Brahe, Rover, Genesis Rock, Lake of Dreams, Draconitic Month, Wernher von Braun, Princess Leonore's Moon, Phoebe, Alexei Leonov, Clair de Lune (see note), Apollo 8.
 Note: Clair de Lune (Claude Debussy). Perhaps the most impressive (and somewhat ironic) version of Debussy's Clair de Lune is heard in the movie The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe/ Philip Kaufman (1984, about the adventures of the seven Mercury astronauts and sound barrier beating test pilot Chuck Yeager).
 
 

LPOD

THE EARTH'S MOON (LPOD from July the 25th, 2011).


This MOON-WIKI page was constructed by the dedicated Sherlock Holmes of Selenography- DannyCaes Oct 9, 2015 on Friday the 9th of October 2015
(you won't believe it, I'm currently at work as a labourer at VOLVO Cars - Industrial port of Ghent, Belgium) (since February 2008). WHAT ?!?!?!?!