A ball of rock that orbits a larger ball of rock and/or gas called a planet. Creates tides and eclipses.

Moons come in many colors, but that of Earth is grey.

A moon and a natural satellite are not the same thing; Earth's moon is not a true satellite since the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system is outside of the Earth.

Also, to moon someone is to expose one's buttocks to them as a joke or a sign of scorn.

    the moon shines brightly through
      my window is open letting
        the cool air in
      my room is a mess
        I am lost
          in my soul
      searching for something
          I don't know
        what I'm
          looking for
            and I can't see anything
        but the Moon
Moon is the round cat in Whispers of the Heart. He's a crucial element of the story. In the manga, there were two cats, but they bore too much of a resemblance to both Luna from Sailor Moon, and Jiji from Ghibli's own Kiki's Delivery Service. A Ghibli rep joked that this combination of two cats is why Moon is so plump.

Moon is mostly cream-colored but has one brown ear. He likes to tease dogs, and takes the train by himself. He seems to have some sort of mystical connection to Baron, but doesn't belong to the store where Baron resides. Instead, he travels all about. Different people call him different names. (They probably all feed him, too, which is probably really why he's so fat.)

"Moon" is also a verb.

To "moon" somebody is to turn one's back to that person, lean over, lower one's trousers, and display one's bottom. In some circles, "mooning" is considered vulgar, and in many situations it's just not okay at all. A job interview, for example, is a lousy choice of mooning venue1. This is so for two reasons: First, it's overwhelmingly likely that nobody wants to look at your ass. Second, mooning is usually taken to imply derision or defiance. If that's not what you want to convey, don't moon: Your intent may be friendly or even affectionate, but your audience probably won't realize that and they'll take it the wrong way. Intent is a funny thing. I agree that your ass has no intrinsic meaning: It signifies only itself, "ass". However, viewers will interpret your ass in many different ways. You could even say that, in a sense, the "text" that is your ass is created anew by each viewer. In short, don't go there. Keep your ass to yourself.

Depending on the physical attributes of the mooner (see "ugly as a man's ass"), mooning may be a bad idea in any context. Before you moon, please consider your ass and think of your audience.

Other noders may wish to share thoughts or fond memories about mooning. That won't be necessary, thank you. Really. Don't.




1 The lousiness of the idea depends on which side of the desk you're on. As an interviewer, I've often been filled with a great desire to moon applicants. Usually this happens with the ones who are lying just a little too outrageously and who think they're slick enough to get away with it. Then again, sometimes I'm just feeling capricious.

GETSU GATSU (moon, month)

ASCII Art Representation:

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Character Etymology:

From a pictograph of a crecent moon with a pitted surface, stylized into its presnt form.

Popularly interpreted as a crecent moon behind wisply clouds, but this is incorrect.

A Listing of All On-Yomi and Kun-Yomi Readings:

on-yomi: GETSU GATSU
kun-yomi: tsuki

Nanori Readings:

Nanori: oto ga su zuki mori

English Definitions:

  1. GETSU: moon; month; Monday.
  2. GATSU: month (of the year).
  3. tsuki: moon, month.

Unicode Encoded Version:

Unicode Encoded Compound Examples:

今月 (kongetsu): this month.
月曜日 (getsuyoobi): Monday.
月見 (tsukimi): moon viewing; moonlight party.

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How many moons are there in the solar system? Do you know? Do you care? Well, you're about to find out:

There are 159 discovered moons in the solar system. I am only counting natural satellites of planets. There are asteroids with “moons”, but they are not on this list. More moons are being discovered all the time, and names are intermittently assigned to those that have already been found but not properly named.

And here they are:


If you notice that I have missed off any moons, please inform me.


Last updated: 23th June 2006.

A wonderfully simple and horrifyingly addictive game for win32, written by Nozomi Matsuzaka.

In moon, you are a sleeping1 fish.
       ___
|\    /   \
| \  /     \
|  \/  \_/  |
|  /\       |
| /  \     /
|/    \___/
The fish follows the mouse pointer, but has a maximum speed and can't always keep up with it. Lots of stars enter the screen, traveling at various speeds and angles, but always downwards and left. In the corner a timer steadily counts up. As it progresses, the stars become larger, faster, and more numerous. A soothing midi file plays in the background2. When the fish collides with a star, the music stops, the game is over (and the fish dies).

Important milestones:
0 - start of game
2500 - larger stars appear
4000 - Enormous stars appear
5440 - My current high score3
69396 - the world high score, as of a few years ago.4

Tips:
Moon works best when you're not concentrating. Just play it forever until your mind is blank :)
Stars can pass through the fish's tail without injury. It's just the head you have to worry about.
Surprisingly, moon is just as playable with a touchpad or accupoint as a mouse. Perfect for airports! I'd appreciate expermental data from anyone with a tablet PC.

Moon is availible from the author's homepage at http://www.ymo.net/~nozomi/works/Moon/

1 - You can tell it's sleeping. It has its eyes shut.
2 - The moon ringtone, for nokia 'phones:
Tempo:160, Scale:6, Note duration, 1/4. Copy and paste the tiny line below:
2h5.,a5,c,h5,2g5.,2d5.,e5,f#5,g5,d5,f#5,g5,h5,c,h5,32a5,32h5,8a5.,g5,a5,2h5., a5,d,f#,2g,a,2h.,c7,h,a,g,f#,a,2g,16d,d,f#,e,c,2h5.,a5,c,h5,2g5.,2d5.,e5,f#5, g5,d5,f#5,g5,h5,c,h5,32a5,32h5,8a5.,g5,a5,2h5.,a5,d,f#,2g,a,2h.,c7,h,a,g,f#, a,2g,d,2g.,8f#,8f#,f#,f#,f#,d,a,g,d,h5,g5,d,g,8f#,8f#,f#,f#,f#,a,c7,8h,8c7,16a., 16h.,16a.,8g,8a,g,d,e,8f#,8f#,f#,f#,f#,d,a,g,d,h5,g5,d,g,8a,8d,a,h,16c7.,16d7., 16c7.,h,a,g,d,h,2a.

3 - Someone's got to have done better than this... feel free to sumbit your high-scores for the E2 moon top 10.
4 - Moon used to have a high-score table (http://www.ymo.net/~nozomi/works/Moon/ranking.html), but it appears to be no more.

Moon is an atmospheric science fiction film released in 2009. It was written and directed by Duncan Jones, who was better known in the 1980s and 1990s as Zowie Bowie - for that is another part of his full name, which is Duncan Zowie Heywood Jones - the son of David Bowie. It stars Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey as its main characters (Spacey voices a non-humaniform robot named Gerty, who has screen time in the trailer so I'm not giving anything away). Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut who works for the Lunar Industries corporation overseeing a lunar energy mine. He is the sole inhabitant of the facility, other than Gerty, whose function is to keep him safe and keep him company. He is on a three-year contract.

That's really all I can tell you about the story. There's a simple reason why. This movie is something of a rare bird, you see. It contains a Big Reveal, one the movie's story orbits, but the movie itself - and it isn't incorrect to use the more formal film, here - the film's power doesn't really derive from the Big Reveal. That's rare. Most films with a Big Reveal stake much of their impact on the reveal itself. Kevin Spacey's famous movie The Usual Suspects does, as one extreme example. Even some really good science fiction does this - for example, in The Empire Strikes Back, much of the loss of story closure wrought by the fact that Empire is a 'middle movie' was compensated for by the Big Reveal that we are hit with around 4/5 of the way through. One of the most famous sci-fi Big Reveals is the end of the original Planet of the Apes - and if you haven't seen that, go see it, I'm not going to tell you.

So back to Moon. Yes, there's what looks like a Big Reveal - but it happens early in the movie. Perhaps 1/3 of the way through, in fact. We the audience are thrown somewhat off-balance by this. Wait, you could hear people saying to themselves, how long is this movie going to be? Expecting, you see, the early closure due to the 'premature' Big Reveal.

That's where the surprises happen.

See, it turns out that this isn't the kind of movie you thought it was. It doesn't depend on the Big Reveal for its staying power. Nope. It's an atmospheric movie; one which introduces and plays with Questions. Not Big Questions, no - perhaps Medium Questions. But it does so in a manner which keeps the movie's energy or tension level nearly flat throughout the entire film. I say flat not to mean zero, but flat - undeviating. There is tension and energy throughout the entire movie. After the Big Reveal, you realize slowly that while the energy level has dropped from the Big Reveal peak, it hasn't fallen any lower than it was for the first section of the movie. There's no loss of intensity. That's a rare, difficult task in a film or even a movie - to keep the viewers hooked in despite having already hit them with a Big Reveal. The instinct is to settle back and start to analyze what the reveal means; to start trying to second-guess the movie's storyline, to see if you can figure out what the director and writer are trying to make you think.

That doesn't happen here. Sure, you will find your mind running down possible storylines as soon as the Reveal happens. But the subtle, more impressive trick is that the director and writer don't really care if you guess what happens or not. They're not trying to fool you. This isn't a contest. They're just interested in telling a damn story, and telling it properly, in the right order, with the proper amount of emphasis at the right time. Really, I should say he not they, because in this case, Mr. Jones is both writer and director.

There are three big reasons this works. Two are environmental. The first is the design of the film. I don't know what the budget for Moon was, but part of me thinks it was probably absurdly low for a full-science-fiction film. (Update: It was, according to the director, at around $5 million US). The set design is cleverly limited by the small space in which the film takes place; it feels like it could have been done as a play with very little change in staging. But that's not to say it's cheap, or not there. The design is consistent, impressive, and wholly believable. Sam Bell lives on the Moon, people, and it's completely buyable. The only problem they have is that when he's out on the surface in a pressure suit, they appear to have spent the effects money to make his movements looks like the Apollo films - the slightly sped-up bunnyhop. Inside the base, he looks like he's perfectly comfortable in 1 gee. But that's okay.

No, the environment is entirely believable. It has that rugged, dirty, scraped industrial feel of Ridley Scott's Nostromo from Alien, superimposed over the 1980s-sterile and flashy outer space environment of 2010: The Year We Make Contact or the Sean Connery flick Outland. As a result, we get a brilliantly 'lived-in' high-tech environment, one where lunar dust gets everywhere if you're not careful, and the anal-retentive robot can't quite reach all the corners to keep them clean.

The second reason this works is Sam Rockwell playing Sam Bell. In some ways, it's a role of fairly low complexity; but in others, it's actually incredibly difficult. That's all I can tell you for now - you'll know why. Sam Bell is part and parcel of the Questions this movie asks, and Rockwell does an excellent job of hinting at them without clubbing you with them.

The third reason this works is the soundtrack. It was composed for the film by Clint Mansell, who in between composing for crapheaps like Doom produced the music for Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain. While I thought The Fountain was one of the worst, most self-indulgent pieces of crap ever, even I had to admit that the music was well-done - its over-the-topness was part and parcel of the flick. In Moon, Mansell's music is repetitive but incredibly well integrated. I would go so far as to say that in the way Stanley Kubrick's selection of Blue Danube made 2001: A Space Odyssey so iconic a set of imagery, Mansell's music does a great deal to lift several scenes from Moon into that elevated company. While I don't think this movie will be remembered decades from now as a classic, I don't think that would upset its makers, because that's not what they set out to do. They set out to make a movie that keeps you nailed to your seat for the full run time, not because you're trying to outguess them or stroke your own ego but because you want them to finish telling the story.

That's rare, these days. Strongly recommended.

As an example of the depth of this movie, I offer the following question to be considered after you've watched it. I'll do my best to avoid spoilers, but look away if you want to be sure.

Think about this: If the story is as they told us, why did Sam see what he saw (twice) before the Big Reveal? Think about it. And think about age.

Moon (2009)

Written and Directed by Duncan Jones
Music composed by Clint Mansell
Cinematography by Gary Shaw
Produced by Stuart Fenegan

Addendum:

Moon has been awarded the 'Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form' Hugo for 2010.

The lead designer/VFX guy from Moon (Gavin Rothery) recently answered a whole bunch of questions on Reddit while promoting his excellent production notes blog from the film.

Moon (?), n. [OE. mone, AS. mona; akin to D. maan, OS. & OHG. mano, G. mond, Icel. mani, Dan. maane, Sw., Lith. men, L. mensis month, Gr. moon, month, Skr. mas moon, month; prob. from a root meaning to measure (cf. Skr. ma to measure), from its serving to measure the time. 271. Cf. Mete to measure, Menses, Monday, Month.]

1.

The celestial orb which revolves round the earth; the satellite of the earth; a secondary planet, whose light, borrowed from the sun, is reflected to the earth, and serves to dispel the darkness of night. The diameter of the moon is 2,160 miles, its mean distance from the earth is 240,000 miles, and its mass is one eightieth that of the earth. See Lunar month, under Month.

The crescent moon, the diadem of night. Cowper.

2.

A secondary planet, or satellite, revolving about any member of the solar system; as, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

3.

The time occupied by the moon in making one revolution in her orbit; a month.

Shak.

4. Fort.

A crescentlike outwork. See Half-moon.

Moon blindness. (a) Far. A kind of ophthalmia liable to recur at intervals of three or four weeks. (b) Med. Hemeralopia. -- Moon dial, a dial used to indicate time by moonlight. -- Moon face, a round face like a full moon. -- Moon madness, lunacy. [Poetic] -- Moon month, a lunar month. -- Moon trefoil Bot., a shrubby species of medic (Medicago arborea). See Medic. -- Moon year, a lunar year, consisting of lunar months, being sometimes twelve and sometimes thirteen.

 

© Webster 1913.


Moon, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Mooned (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Mooning.]

To expose to the rays of the moon.

If they have it to be exceeding white indeed, they seethe it yet once more, after it hath been thus sunned and mooned. Holland.

 

© Webster 1913.


Moon, v. i.

To act if moonstruck; to wander or gaze about in an abstracted manner.

Elsley was mooning down the river by himself. C. Kingsley.

 

© Webster 1913.

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