Carol Lombardo., Age 11, Of Westlake, Ohio, For her question:

Exactly how big is the moon?

In sky distance, the width of the full moon occupies about half of one degree, roughly the width of a pencil held at arm's length. Its size, of course, seems to shrink with distance, and this averages 238,840 miles from the earth. If the earth were hollow, it could swallow 50 moon size satellites.

The diameter of a globe is a line through the middle from pole to pole, and the diameter of the moon is 2160 miles, which is about one quarter as long as the diameter of the earth. In the sky, the moon seems to be the same size as the sun, which is also about half a degree wide. But the sun is 400 times farther away and also 400 times bigger than the moon.