lunar appreciation

Doing Eris day stuff I've spent a lot of time on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size

Maybe everybody knows these things, and I am just learning them because of this weird kick I'm on.

But we have a really great Moon.

It's the 5th largest moon in our solar system, and that's saying a lot because there are well over 200 moons to compare it to. Jupiter has over 70. As a planet, Jupiter is MASSIVE compared to Earth, makes us look like a dot. And it is host to the solar system's largest moon: Ganymede. But Ganymede is only slightly larger than our moon... not even twice the size. There's Callisto, and Io, then Saturn has Titan, then our moon.

As a kid, I heard that mars had two moons, and I was jealous. But I've just learned, at age 40, that Mars' moons are nothing like ours.

Our moon's radius: 1737 km
Phobos: 11 km
Deimos: 6 km

Unremarkable chunks of rocks! They're not even round!

You know, I keep saying that Pluto and Eris are oddly small because they're not even as big as our moon. But maybe I should stop making that comparison. Because our moon is pretty damn huge.

Our moon keeps us stable so we don't tilt too much. It gives us tides in the ocean. I attracts other nasty space darts flying at us so they don't hit the earth. We might not be here if it weren't for our moon. And once we did evolve to recognize it, it became was our first calendar, and night lighting. Entire nocternal species evolved because they could hunt by the light of the moon.

And to think R.E.M. said There's nothing up there to see. Nothing that's cool.