The Moon has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for countless others. It is a motif in the visual arts, the performing arts, poetry, prose and music. A 5000-year-old rock carving at Knowth, Ireland may represent the Moon, which would be the earliest depiction discovered.[87] In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Moon was thought to be a deity or other supernatural phenomenon, and astrological views of the Moon continue to be propagated today.
Among the first in the Western world to offer a scientific explanation for the Moon was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (d. 428 BC), who reasoned that the Sun and Moon were both giant spherical rocks, and that the latter reflected the light of the former. His atheistic view of the heavens was one cause for his imprisonment and eventual exile.[88]
In Aristotle's (384–322 BC) description of the universe, the Moon marked the boundary between the spheres of the mutable elements (earth, water, air and fire), and the imperishable stars of aether. This separation was held to be part of physics for many centuries after.[89]
Aristarchus went a step further and computed the distance from earth, together with its size, obtaining a value of 20 earth radius for the distance (the real value is 60. The earth radius was known since Eratosthenes)
During the Warring States of China, astronomer Shi Shen (fl. 4th century BC) gave instructions for predicting solar and lunar eclipses based on the relative positions of the Moon and Sun.[90] Although the Chinese of the Han Dynasty (202 BC–202 AD) believed the Moon to be energy equated to qi, their 'radiating influence' theory recognized that the light of the Moon was merely a reflection of the Sun (mentioned by Anaxagoras above).[91] This was supported by mainstream thinkers such as Jing Fang (78–37 BC) and Zhang Heng (78–139 AD), but it was also opposed by the influential philosopher Wang Chong (27–97 AD).[91] Jing Fang noted the sphericity of the Moon, while Zhang Heng accurately described a lunar eclipse and solar eclipse.[91][92] These assertions were supported by Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) who created an allegory equating the waxing and waning of the Moon to a round ball of reflective silver that, when doused with white powder and viewed from the side, would appear to be a crescent.[93] He also noted that the reason for the Sun and Moon not eclipsing every time their paths met was because of a small obliquity in their orbital paths.[93]
By the Middle Ages, before the invention of the telescope, more and more people began to recognise the Moon as a sphere, though they believed that it was "perfectly smooth".[94] In 1609, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book Sidereus Nuncius and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters. Later in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi drew a map of the Moon and gave many craters the names they still have today.
On maps, the dark parts of the Moon's surface were called maria (singular mare) or seas, and the light parts were called terrae or continents. The possibility that the Moon contains vegetation and is inhabited by selenites was seriously considered by major astronomers even into the first decades of the 19th century. The contrast between the brighter highlands and darker maria create the patterns seen by different cultures as the Man in the Moon, the rabbit and the buffalo, among others.
In 1835, the Great Moon Hoax fooled some people into thinking that there were exotic animals living on the Moon.[95] Almost at the same time however (during 1834–1836), Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler were publishing their four-volume Mappa Selenographica and the book Der Mond in 1837, which firmly established the conclusion that the Moon has no bodies of water nor any appreciable atmosphere.
The far side of the Moon remained completely unknown until the Luna 3 probe was launched in 1959, and it was extensively mapped by the Lunar Orbiter program in the 1960s.
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