Maybe the Moon is Beautiful Only Because It's Far
Some things glow more brightly because we’re not close enough to see the cracks. Perhaps moon is beautiful only because it is far. Its light, cold and unattainable, is of a regard that would not endure the gaze of intimacy. This notion — that distance is essential for beauty, and in some ways creates it — has long influenced aesthetic theory. Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), understood that the vague and immense are capable of overpowering our senses and elicit a sense of the sublime. Beauty (in this sense) is not in the beautiful itself, but in the reaction of awe at something too far to be properly perceived. As Burke insisted, clarity and closeness would leech things of their emotional force; mystery in contrast rises from obscurity, scale and distance. The moon, as seen from this planet, is beautiful not because of what it is, but because of its distancing technology.
