Dr Shane Bergin

Are we there yet?

Yeah.

The thing about the moon that fascinates us is that it is so near to us in the grand scheme of things, yet it's so far.

It's so familiar, yet so alien.

You know, it is an ancient timekeeper, a constant.

Your recent slot there about the beginning of May, we associate times of the year with it, like the flower moon that might come around Bealtaine.

It has been going around the Earth as long as the Earth has been here.

But yet it has all these strange qualities.

It's a place of complete extremes.

A day on the moon, in other words, the time for it to orbit on its own axis, is the same amount of time as it takes for it to go around the Earth.

So one of our months is equivalent to a lunar day.

And as a consequence of that, we always face the same side of the moon.

So we only ever see you the one face.

And everyone refers to the other side as Pink Floyd rightly said, the dark side of the moon.

Really?

I'm not sure it would have sold as many copies.

It should have been the far side of the moon like Gary Larson.

So it gets light on the backside of the moon.

It's just that it is dark to us.

We cannot see it.