Cool Moon Facts by Whip

Real astronomy and dated history, with sources. Documented traditions and folklore. Modern lunar astrology · symbolic, not predictive.

4 October 1957 Waxing Gibbous, 85% lit

Sputnik

The night the Space Age began, there was already an 87% moon up, the object everyone had been looking at for the previous four billion years.

Sputnik was visible from the ground as a moving star, and hundreds of thousands of people went outside to look. Twelve years later some of them watched a live broadcast from the surface of the older object.

Date
4 October 1957
Moon computed for
19:00 local time, UTC+3
Phase
Waxing Gibbous
Illuminated
85%

Source: NASA history (opens in a new tab)

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