OVERVIEW
] MOONThe Moon is a moon of Earth. It orbits Earth at a mean distance of 384 400 . It has a mass of 0.01 and a mean radius of 0.27 · 1737 . It has been known since antiquity.
Earth's only natural satellite, and the only world other than this one that humans have stood on. It is slowly drifting away, about four centimetres a year.
- WHAT IT IS
- Moon of Earth
- HOW FAR
- 384 400
- HOW BIG
- 0.27 · 1737
- ONE ORBIT TAKES
- 27.3
Its average distance from the Earth, not from Earth.
Its mean radius: half the width across.
One trip round the Earth.
THE MODEL
] CATALOGUED RADIUSCALCULATED · NOT AN OBSERVATION · CATALOGUED RADIUS · DENSITY 3.34 G/CM³ · RADIUS 1740 KM · LIT FROM WHERE THE SUN IS · SURFACE FROM A GLOBAL MAP · AT ITS REAL LONGITUDES
Drawn from the catalogued radius and from the same properties the picture at the top of this page uses, at the distance a flight to it would stop. The surface is a global map rather than a pattern — a mosaic of real images, wrapped on by latitude and longitude. It is saturated in colour and with the gaps in its coverage filled by the texture's publisher. Longitude zero on it is laid where longitude zero on the body actually is at the moment this page was built, so a feature is drawn where the feature is. The map comes from Solar System Scope, under CC BY 4.0. Drag it, or use the arrow keys, to look from another direction. The stars behind are the 498,631 this catalogue holds real distances for, at their real positions and drawn from where the camera actually is — so the constellations are wrong, and that is the point. This is the sky from there, not the sky from here.
IMAGES
] 4 FRAMES- Gregory H. Revera
CC BY-SA 3.0 - NASA
Public domain - Wikideas1
CC0 - Wikideas1
CC0
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see Moon for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
Say where you are, and this line says when Moon is worth going out for.
THROUGH AN EYEPIECE
] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECEBright enough to pick out with your eyes alone, and from a lit street as well as a dark one. Today it is 30.7′ across. It is a disc to your eyes alone, and at 48× it is big enough to look around inside.
- 48×
- 1.08
- 1.25
- 13.0
- 30.7
- LIT BY THE SUN
- 0% of the face
- SHOWS A DISC FROM
- no at all
- MAGNITUDE TODAY
- −4.49 · within reach
Computed for 2026-10-11 from the centre of the Earth, and from the mean radius the catalogue holds. A distance changes daily, so this width is a fact about that date and not about the body.
CATALOG DATA
] 22 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT KIND OF THING IT IS
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Mean density
- 3.344 ±0.001
THE ORBIT
The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.
- Orbits
- Earth
- Orbital period
- 27.322
- Eccentricity
- Inclination
- 5.16
- Longitude of ascending node
- 125.08
- Argument of periapsis
- 318.15
- Mean anomaly
- 135.27
- Element epoch
- 2451545.0000
- Elements referred to
- the ecliptic — the plane of the Earth's orbit
- Apsidal precession period
- 5.997
- Nodal precession period
- 18.6
- Mean anomaly fitted to the ephemeris
- 135.79
- Mean anomaly rate
- 13.0649
- Apsidal precession rate
- 0.164353
- Nodal precession rate
- −0.0529907
- Agreement with the ephemeris
- 1.5
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- Also known as
- Earth I, Lua, Luna, Sol IIIa, The Moon, moon, the Moon
- JPL satellite code
- 301
- Wikidata item
- Q405
- Wikipedia article
- Moon
WHERE THESE FIGURES CAME FROM
Which catalogue, paper or model each of the fields above was read from, where the source named one.
- Ephemeris
- DE405/LE405
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 1 DESIGNATIONS- Common name Moon
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. Moon [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/moon
@misc{spacecatalog_moon,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{Moon}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/moon},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Planetary Satellite Data.}
}The values above were taken from JPL Planetary Satellite Data — No licence stated; citation requested. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.
That catalogue asks for this acknowledgement: Solar System Dynamics. (Downloaded 2026, September 13). Planetary Satellite Mean Elements; Planetary Satellite Physical Parameters; Planetary Satellite Discovery Circumstances. https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
RECENT ACTIVITY
] 3 ITEMS- Artemis II Crew Moon Photo Annotations2026-10-07 · NASA · MISSION UPDATE
- Artemis II Crew Moon Photo Annotations2026-10-07 · NASA · RELEASE
- Mapping the Gaps in NASA’s Return to the Moon, featuring Richard Spolzino2026-10-04 · NASA · MISSION UPDATE
NASA · UPDATED DAILY