Why can we never see the other side of the moon?

Answer 1

In a simple statement, the moon revolves around the earth at the same speed as it rotates. If it moves 10 degrees around its orbit, it spins only 10 degrees around its axis. Rotation is facing all 360 degrees of a circle. Revolving is the movement of one body around another.
An experiment..

Stand still in the middle of the room and slowly spin around in one place. You see the walls of the room seem to spin around until you come back to your starting place. you are rotating. (now it gets tricky) Place a chair in the room and move around it but keep your eyes fixed on a spot ahead of you so you see the same wall as you move around the chair. You are now revolving. Now move around the chari and keep looking at the chair. You will see the walls spin behind the chair until you get back to your starting point. You are the moon and the chair is the earth and youare rotating and revolving at the same time. Notice the chair always sees just your face.

Answer 2

The moon is the earth’s only natural satellite. Its average distance from the earth is 384,403 km. Its revolution period around the earth is the same length and direction as its rotation period, which results in the moon always keeping one side turned toward the earth and the other side turned away from the earth. This type of motion is called synchronous rotation. The side turned away from the earth is called the moon’s dark side, even though it is lit half of the time. The moon’s sidereal period of revolution is about 27.32 days long. This means that a line drawn through the center of the earth and the moon would point to the same star every 27.32 days. Due to slight variations in the orbital velocity of the moon, over a 30 year period, 59% of the moon’s surface is made visible. This is known as libration.

The moon’s orbit is not in the plane of the ecliptic and because of the elliptical nature of the moon’s orbit, it is not always the same distance from the earth. At the two intersections of the moon’s orbit and the plane of the ecliptic are two nodes. These nodes regress along the plane of the ecliptic, making one complete rotation every 18.61 years.

I read somewhere that the moon does not orbit the Earth as such but the paths of the Earth and Moon means that the moon will have gone around the Earth. Bugging me now where I read that as the above doesn't clearly state that.

Answer 3

Mr Smith's answer is correct, just as the Moons gravity exerts a tidal pull on the Earth resulting in the Oceans rising and falling so too the Earths gravity imparts a "pull" on the Moon.

The Earths gravity is much stronger than the Moons and over time it's rotation slowed until finally it has been "captured" by the Earths pull and is now presenting it's heavier face towards us. Think of the front wheel on a bicycle, if it is lifted off the ground and spun it will always come to rest in the same position, ie with the heaviest part pointing towards the the Earths center of Gravity. In the event the wheel was perfectly balanced it would stop at a different point, so too if the Moon was perfectly balanced it would not have stopped spinning.

..john

Answer 4

Because the rotation of the moon about it's axis matches perfectly the orbital rotation of the moon around the earth. Actually it's not pure coincidence, just a bit of subtle physics. The secret lies in the fact that the moon is NOT perfectly round; it's just a big egg-shaped in regards to center of gravity. So, for the non-spherical moon to spin on its axis in any other way (faster or slower), this would necessarily impart a "wobble" in its orbit around the Earth. However, the system (of the two orbiting bodies, Earth and Moon) is in the least energetic state when there isn't a wobble, which keeps "the man in the moon" always facing us.

Answer 5

Haha, i've got seen each and each probability of an answer. THe moon rotates, the moon doesnt' rotate. all of us understand whats there, we've not have been given any concept whats there. I make errors too......i could only ask a technological know-how professor/instructor to get the perfect answer Zorro. anyhow, my reaction is. The moon roates around the earth each 28 days....i could be off there by potential of decimal factors. It takes an identical quantity of time to rotate on its axis. So an identical fringe of the moon consistently faces us. The moon does not make its very own mild, its the mirrored photograph of the sunlight's mild. A "new moon" is while the moon is between the sunlight and the earth. we don't see it because of the fact the different ingredient is getting all the mild....that's the "dark ingredient". Our probes then can actually see the "dark ingredient" of the moon.

Answer 6

The time taken for the moon to turn on its axis once and the time taken for it to revolve once around the earth are the same.Hence the moon shows us the same face every night.This is called captured rotation.This equality is the result of tidal friction.
Inspite of this fact ,we can actually examine more than half of the total surface.The reason is that moon travels around the earth in an elliptical orbit.So,while the rate of axial spin remains constant,orbital velocity changes.It is fastest when it is closest to the earth.So,we are able to see some extra portions of its surface.We can thus see a little round alternate edges of the moon.Also,the lunar orbit is tilted with reference to ours,so that the moon is sometimes north and sometimes south of the mean plane.This enables us to see some way beyond alternate poles.These minor shifts known as Librations allow us examine four-sevenths of the total surface.Only the remaining three-sevenths of the moon is permanently hidden from our eyes.

Answer 7

The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the Earth. The far hemisphere was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959, and was first directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968. The rugged terrain is distinguished by a multitude of crater impacts, as well as relatively few lunar maria. It includes the largest known impact feature in the Solar System: the South Pole-Aitken basin. The far side has been suggested as a potential location for a large radio telescope, as it would be shielded from possible radio interference from Earth.

Answer 8

The reason for this is the moon is a projection of the earth, so whenever you look at it you only see one side.

I have got no idea, the answer is all in the interpertaion from different people

Answer 9

"The moon rotates on its asxis in exactly the same time that it takes to revolve about the Earth. As a consequence, the moon always keeps the same face turned toward the earth."- (Fraknoi, Morrison, Wolff. pg 74)

Answer 10

It orbits at the same rate as which it rotates, as such it always shows us the same face. Get a couple of apples and move one around the other with the same side toward the middle apple. You'll see how it works.

Answer 11

Because the moon spins around us the moon only stays on one side it doesn't move except when it rotates around the earth.