5.2.2 United States missions 5.

3 Current era: 1990present 6 Astronomy from the Moon 7 Legal status 8 In culture 9 See also 10 References 10.1 Notes 10.2 Citations 10.3 Bibliography 11 Further reading 12 External links 12.1 Cartographic resources 12.2 Observation tools 12.3 General

The Moon, tinted red and orange, as seen from Earth during a lunar eclipse.

Name and etymology

The English proper name for Earth's natural satellite is "the Moon".[9][10] The noun moon derives from moone (around 1380), which developed from mone (1135), which derives from Old English mna (dating from before 725), which, like all Germanic language cognates, ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mnn.[11] The principal modern English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar, derived from the Latin Luna. Another less common adjective is selenic, derived from the Ancient Greek Selene (), from which the prefix "seleno-" (as in selenography) is derived.[12]

Formation
Main articles: Origin of the Moon and Giant impact hypothesis Several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moon's formation 4.527 0.010 billion years ago,[h] some 3050 million years after the origin of the Solar System.[13] Recent research presented by Rick Carlson indicates a slightly younger age of between 4.40 and 4.45 billion years.[14] [15] These mechanisms included the fission of the Moon from Earth's crust through centrifugal force[16] (which
The evolution of the Moon and a tour of the Moon.

would require too great an initial spin of Earth),[17] the gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon[18] (which would require an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of Earth to dissipate the energy of

the passing Moon),[17] and the co-formation of Earth and the Moon together in the primordial accretion disk (which does not explain the depletion of metallic iron in the Moon).[17] These hypotheses also cannot account for the high angular momentum of the EarthMoon system.[19]