Asteroid Hyalitis


Earth's Moon is enchanting; bewitching. The face of the "man"--that some cultures see etched on its brilliant surface--is really composed of the dark areas of the lunar maria (Latin for "seas"), and the lighter highlands of the Moon's surface. Some cultures tell of other examples of strange images seen on the Moon's lovely disk, such as the "Moon Rabbit". There are over 100 moons dancing around the eight major planets of our Sun's family. Most of them are small, frozen, icy objects, harboring only a relatively scanty amount of rocky material, that circle around the quartet of giant gaseous planets that dwell in the outer, frigid realm of our Solar System--far from the comforting warmth and brilliance of our Star. The quartet of majestic, giant denizens of our outer Solar System--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--are enveloped with gaseous atmospheres, and orbited by a multitude of dancing, sparkling moons and moonlets. In marked contrast, the inner region of our Solar System--where our Earth dwells--is almost bereft of moons. Of the quartet of relatively petite, rocky "terrestrial" planets--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--only Earth is circled by a large Moon. Mercury and Venus are moonless, and Mars is orbited by a duo of tiny, lumpy, potato-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Phobos and Deimos are probably escaped asteroids, born in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, that were captured by the gravitational embrace of the Red Planet long ago. Were you aware of the fact that the moon has a huge impact on fishing? I used to find this hard to believe, but it's true. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand how the moon and fishing fit together. As a matter of fact, by spending about a half an hour educating yourself can pay huge dividends in not only the amount of fish that you catch, but also the size of those fish. All because of the moon, who would have thought?