This lesson is optional. It presents one of two methods by which ancient Greek astronomers estimated the distance to the Moon. ... This lesson plan supplements: "How distant is the Moon?--2," section #8d: on disk Shipparc.htm , on the web . ... Terms: Solareclipse (total and partial) (terms umbra and penumbra may be used by the teacher for total and partial shadow), baseline, parallax. ... The Earth-Sun distance and Earth-Moon distance vary due to the elliptical orbits of the Earth and the Moon. ...
Hipparchus, who used an eclipse of the Moon to deduce the precession of the equinoxes ( here ), used a total eclipse of the Sun --probably in 129 BC--to estimate how far the Moon was. But he also derived the Moon's distance from a lunar eclipse--see here .) That eclipse was total at the Hellespont--the Dardanelles, part of the narrow strait that separates the European and Asian parts of Turkey--but only 4 / 5 of the Sun were covered in Alexandria of Egypt, further to the south. ...
... Taken from the NASA/JPL information summary "Our Solar System at a Glance". The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) automated spacecraft for solar system exploration come in many shapes and sizes. ... Electrical power is required to operate the spacecraft instruments and systems. ... Between 1959 and 1971, NASA spacecraft were dispatched to study the Moon and the solar environment; they also scanned the inner planets other than Earth -- Mercury , Venus and Mars . ...