Robert Pook, Age 11,  from Idaho, for his question:

Does the moon move?

Years ago, poets imagined that the stars made sweet music as they moved through the sky. For the moon, the earth, the sun and all the stars are whirling through never ending circles and curlacues. The dance is a great circle of stars, some 600,000 trillion miles wide, swinging around like a cartwheel, Each dancer spins around like a top and small groups swing a partner or a dozen partners. The sun swings nine planets; the earth swings its partner, tho moon.

The moon, along with our Solar System, swings around the huge cartwheel Galaxy at about 170 miles   a second. It also swings with the earth in a yearly circle around the sun at about 181 miles second. And every 27 1/3 days it swings once around the earth.

Earth's gravitation and its own speed keep it at an average distance

of 238,985 miles though at times it comes as close as 221,463 miles and at other times swings as far out as 242,703 miles.

In addition, like everything else in the sky, the moon spins around its own axis like a top. Because of earth's gravitation, this spinning is slowed down so that the moon turns only once on its axis as it makes one circle around the earth. It keeps the same face always towards its partner, the earth.

The earth is spinning around its axis once every 24 hours and it faces its part¬ner with first one side, then another. At moon rise, our part of the earth is turning to face the moon. When the moon is overhead we are almost directly facing it. As moon sets, we are turning our backs on our partner,. while the opposite side of the earth is turning to face it.

In addition we can watch daylight creep over the face of the moon. Since the moon spins around only once in a month, its day and night are each about two weeks long, the face towards us lights with golden sunshine, first as a thin sliver, their half, then as a radiant full moon.