A profile of our moon

Do you want to know more about the moon? Here we give you an overview of the most important facts about the moon that make it seem even more impressive.

The size of the moon

With a diameter of 3,476 km, it is the fifth largest moon in our solar system, but only about a quarter of the size of Earth.

The distance to Earth

Depending on its position in orbit, the Moon is between 363,300 and 405,500 km from Earth. The average distance is 384,000 km.

The moon's times

The Moon's orbital period around the Earth is 29.53 days. A lunar day, on the other hand, lasts 27 days and 7 hours of Earth time.

The surface of the moon

Large, dark surfaces: Among other things, the Moon consists of dry lowlands that were formed by impacts from large asteroids. However, this already happened about 4 billion years ago! These craters filled with lava from the moon's interior, which was still hot at the time, then cooled down and caused the discolouration.

Lunar mountains: The Moon has many mountain ranges, some of which are 4,000 m high.

Craters of various sizes: In addition to asteroids, meteorites of various sizes also hit our moon millions of years ago, causing craters of different sizes.

Dust: This pulverised the lunar surface, creating large amounts of dust with each impact. This covers a large area of the moon.

Fun facts

We always see the same side of the Moon, because it takes the same amount of time for the Moon to rotate around itself as it does to orbit the Earth.

So far, 12 people have been on the moon.

On the moon you would be six times lighter than on earth!