100+ Words Related to Moon

August 2, 2023

You can not help but notice the moon. It lights the night sky and even moves the seas. But words related to moon can you use to describe this celestial object? Here are some moon words that you can add to your vocabulary.

Table of Contents

Crescent

Two of the moon’s eight phases are crescent phases. Phases refer to how much of the moon faces the sun and, as a result, reflects sunlight. The crescent shape shows that a thin sliver of the moon reflects this light. As you look up from Earth, a waning crescent is on the left side of the moon, while a waxing crescent is on the right.

Lunar Eclipse

Sometimes, the Earth can block all light from the sun from reaching the moon. This is a lunar eclipse. When you see this, no light is reflected from the moon, and the sphere appears completely darkened. There are also partial lunar eclipses.

Orbit

A moon’s orbit is an oval-shaped path around a planet or other heavenly body. While you’ll age a full year before the Earth finishes its orbit of the sun, the moon’s trip around the Earth lasts a little less than a month.

Planet

Of the words related to moon that you may hear, a planet does not refer to a moon but to an astronomical body that, according to NASA:

Orbits a star (the sun for our solar system)
Has sufficient gravity to take the form of a sphere
Has sufficient gravity to keep other large bodies from its orbit

Tide

Like Earth, the moon has a gravitational pull, although it is somewhat weaker than our planet’s. Still, the moon’s pull draws part of the Earth in, causing it to swell. This is the cause of the high and low tides.

Gravity

As mentioned, there is gravity on the moon, i.e., the force that draws an object to the center of the sphere. However, lunar gravity is less than 17 percent of Earth’s gravitational pull.

New Moon

A new moon represents the first phase, where the moon is in a direct line between the sun and the Earth. So, you will see little of the moon in phase one. As the phases proceed, more moon will show.

Illumination

Phases of the moon are associated with how much of the moon shines in the night sky. It is essential to know that the moon generates none of its own light or, to use a better word, illumination. Instead, it reflects the light that the sun radiates. So, its position relative to the sun and Earth determines the moon’s illumination to our planet.

Craters

The moon looks like Swiss cheese because of the depressions, or craters, visible with a good telescope or even with the naked eye. These concave hollows are likely the result of meteors and asteroids striking the moon itself.

Blood Moon

If Earth is between the sun and the moon, it can create a lunar eclipse. At such times, a red shade appears to color the moon’s illumination. This is a blood moon. If this occurs when the moon is closest to the Earth, the moon looks bigger, a “super blood moon.”

Total Solar Eclipse

So what happens if the moon gets between the Earth and the sun? It closes off the sun’s light from reaching Earth. You can only see the star’s corona — its outer atmosphere. This is a total solar eclipse.

Mare

Looking at the moon, you see some areas of the surface that are darker than others. These low-level plains are called “mares” because early astronomers thought they were oceans. There are more than one mares (literally, seas) on the moon, each looking different from another.