Luna moth color is blue-green in the north and for the over-wintering generation in the central and southern states; second and third generation wing color has more of a yellow-green tint. Described and named "Phalena plumata caudata" by James Petiver in 1700, this was the first North American saturniid to be reported in the insect literature. The initial Latin name, which roughly translates to "brilliant, feather tail", was replaced when Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1758 in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, and renamed it "Phalaena luna", later "Actias luna", with "luna" derived from Luna, the Roman moon goddess. The
Dynamics of the celestial spheres following the Ash'ari doctrine of atomism, which maintained that all physical effects were caused directly by God's will rather than by natural causes. He maintained that the celestial spheres were "imaginary things" and "more tenuous than a spider's web". His views were challenged by al-Jurjani (1339–1413), who argued that even if the celestial spheres "do not have an external reality, yet they are things that are correctly imagined and correspond to what [exists] in actuality". In the Early Middle Ages, Plato's picture of the heavens was dominant among European philosophers, which led Christian thinkers to question the role and nature