How big is moon and how far is it? Let's put facts into perspective

International News

Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into perspective just how large, and just how distant, our nearest neighbour actually is.
So just how big is the Moon?
The Moon passing in front of Earth, captured by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), more than a million kilometres away from our planet.
That answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you might think. Like Earth, the Moon isn’t a perfect sphere. Instead, it’s slightly squashed (what we call an oblate sphereoid). This means the Moon’s diameter from pole to pole is less than the diameter measured at the equator.
But the difference is small, just four kilometres. The equatorial diameter of the Moon is about 3,476km, while the polar diameter is 3,472km.
To see how big that is we need to compare it to something of a similar size, such as Australia.
From coast to coast
The distance from Perth to Brisbane, as the crow flies, is 3,606km. If you put Australia and the Moon side by side, they look to be roughly the same size.
The Moon vs Australia. NASA/Google Earth

 But that’s just one way of looking at things. Although the Moon is about as wide as Australia, it is actually much bigger when you think in terms of surface area. It turns out the surface of the Moon is much larger than that of Australia.The land area of Australia is some 7.69 million square kilometers...Read More