Lunar influence

As storms start to batter the western seaboard of Ireland, there's little hope that the telescope will see much action over the coming nights. Rain and sleet are promised, all fine for blowing away the cobwebs but classic hibernation weather too. Living on the coast, as we do, then its hardly surprising that we're aware of the tides as they rise and sink and indeed it's been suggested by a couple of my readers that perhaps I might say something about that engine of the tides, the moon, in one of my little 'astronomy in five minutes' videos. So why not? Sure there are plenty of other topics to cover, but its nice to get suggestions and with so many blogs that have no readers/followers I'm grateful that I have a readership and so am happy to oblige! I'll look at some interesting and lesser known aspects as well as the basics. I also had it originally in mind to issue an episode on every full moon, but I'm out of sync thus far!
The video below shows the rotating Earth as the moon passes by viewed from a space probe some 31 million miles distant.