Does the moon rotate like other planets or does it always face us without movement?
965145
It's called a "captured orbit".  Use two oranges or balls. Hold one as the Earth in your left hand on a table.  It's going to stay still for demonstration purposes.  Hold the other orange with your right hand like the moon nearby and stick a toothpick in it so that the toothpick faces the "Earth" orange.  Now, just to see how the moon can be rotating AND keeping the same face toward the Earth, slowly begin to orbit the moon counter-clockwise around the Earth with the toothpick facing the Earth. Take the moon all the way around the earth, keeping the toothpick facing the Earth.  Do it again, slowly, and notice that the moon actually turns all the way around once, or, rotates, everytime it orbits all the way around the Earth. It takes the real moon 28 days to orbit or go all the way around the Earth, and 28 days to rotate all the way around it's own axis. Cool, huh?  : )  Took me like fifty years to figure that out.
627332
First of all i would like to say that you are some kind of good thinker.. well for 4 years old, this kind of question may too complex for you. But i try to answer it for our knowledge.\n\nWell the moon is not just go down when the sun is up. The world is rotating itself, while the world is rotating around the sun. In the same time, the moon is rotating around the earth and the sun. When you are at any part of the earth expecially near to the equator, you will see some kind of nice organized pattern of when sun is out, the moon is gone, otherwise vise versa. \n\nWell, actually this is not the true. The moon is still there rotating around the earth in 24 hour time, but when the part of the earth where get alots of sun shine, the brighness of the moon will dissphere like you shine a touch in a good shinine day. The light from the touch will not seen as in the dark. But we cannot say that the ligh is gone. The light is still there but, due to the brigher light of the sun (higher cendela - unit for light), the reflaction light of moon is not seen.\n\nThere are some infomation that i can help you. It's good to think!!!
212220
Yes. If you are watching earth and moon from a distant place far far away in space, it would look like that. There is another thing- Moon and earth have a irregular movement due to each others gravity. They kind of wobble a tiny bit. The earth is moving, and the moon is revolving around the earth and following the earth.
32936
"The moon does not circle the Earth once a day. The Earth circles the sun once a day. The Moon orbits the Earth about twice every 24 hours. That's why we have tides (high and low)."\n\nSAY WHAT?  Not even close.  There are junior high science teachers weeping over this "answer".\n\nThe earth rotates once a day on its axis.  That is the definition of a day - the time it takes for a planetary body to rotate once on its axis. \nThe earth circles the sun once a year - actually 365.24 days (which is why we have leap years).  That is the definition of a year - the time it takes for a planet to orbit the sun.  As you can tell, planetary years are longer or shorter depending on the distance from the sun.\nOur earth's axis is tilted.  The northern hemisphere is closer to the sun in the summer and farther in the winter.  This is how we get seasons.\n\nThe moon orbits the earth once every twenty-eight days, give or take an afternoon. The phases of the moon are caused by it being in a slightly different position everyday relative to the sun.  \nThe moon does cause tides - its gravitational pull causes the oceans to bulge out towards the moon.  However, there is a matching bulge directly opposite the moon.  THAT is why we have two high tides and two low tides a day.  In addition, the sun exerts a lesser pull, which interacts with the moons pull.\n\nSorry about that - had to correct the flagrant misinformation there.\n\nAs for your question - it is a weird effect, isn't it?  Especially when the moon is closer to a new moon.\n\nWhat happens is that our atmosphere scatters the light from the sun so that our sky is quite bright.(Why is the sky blue? has been discussed here many times).  However, the moon is reflecting enough light so that it is brighter than the surrounding sky and we see it.\n\nWhen the moon is less than full, there is very little light reflected off of the dark side of the moon (what light is reflected is earthshine!)  This light is not bright enough to outshine the sky.\n\nThink of a white sheet (in a dark room) that images are being projected onto.  The sheet will look opaque until someone shines a light onto it from the back that is brighter than the image projected from the front.  That is the basic effect that we are getting - the atmosphere is a sheet, with the sun and the moon both shining on to it.
357890
It takes the Moon 27.322 days to go around the Earth once. Because of this motion, the Moon appears to move about 13° against the stars each day, or about one-half degree per hour. If you watch the Moon over the course of several hours one night, you will notice that its position among the stars will change by a few degrees.
700627
The rotation of the moon just happens to be in the same sync as its orbit around the earth, so we only see one side. From the looks of the moon, though, it's speculated that the moon may have orbited faster or rotated faster, etc because there are crater marks on the earth side also, just not as many.\n\nActually, the moon is locked in its orbit so it always faces the Earth. The Moon is NOT perfectly round...technically its shaped like an egg due to the effects of gravity from the earth and possibly too when the moon was formed bilions of years agao after a huge meteor crashed into the earth and some of the Earth's molten core spewed out into space. Because the Earth is more massive than the Moon, it pulls on the Moon, "stretching" it closer to the Earth, throwing the shape and axis off, causing the moon unable to rotate on its own axis. This same effect is seen by the moons of other massive planets like Jupiter and Saturn. The same is effect is also seen with Mercury due to its close proximity the Sun and its massive gravitational effects.
5110
The earth exerts a powerful gravitational attraction for the moon (the moon also exerts a similar but lesser attraction for the earth that raises tides both in the ocean and to a lesser extent in the earth's crust that move about the earth as it spins).  The earth's attraction has raised a bulge in the moon facing earth that is therefore slightly closer to the earth and more strongly attracted.  If a huge meteor struck the moon (as in the past) trying to rotate it, it would have to overcome the earth's attraction for the bulge; thus the moon always faces its bulge toward the earth.  If the moon did spin at one time, the bulge would have helped arrest the motion relative to earth as it deleloped and froze solid.
738089
Just as the moon can cause tides in the Earth's oceans due to gravity, the Earth can also cause tidal effects on the moon.  Over time, these effects have caused the moon to become "tidally locked".  This has the effect of causing the moon's rotation period to equal its revolution period.  You can see this effect by having someone walk around you but looking directly at you.  While they are facing you, the actual direction of their face changes as they move around you.\n\nHowever, the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular.  It is a slight ellipse so, sometimes, its rotation can get a little ahead or behind of its orbital position.  Also the orbit is tilted with respect to the Earth's equator.  These combine to allow us to see about 55 -60 % of the moon's surface during the orbit although, of course, we can only see half at any given time.
967123
It does! It is going slower and slower all the time, due to the gravitational drag of the moon. Eventually, there will be tidal lock, and the moon will be much further away. And you and I will be a billion years dead.\nSee, all this happens on a PLANETARY time scale. We can't perceive it, except with very very sensitive devices that have only become available fairly recently.\nAs to why it spins ... maybe its happy? \nNo no no. It spins because it retains the orbital movement from when it coalesced into a solid mass. At the core, there is a gravitational singularity, and all the matter that makes up our planet is/was in orbit around it, but reached equilibrium in the collapse, forming the "solid" planetary mass.\nWhat astronomers are only now coming to realize (having deduced that there is a lot more matter in the universe than is readily observable) is that there are gravitational singularities at the core of virtually every large-scale body - planets, stars, and galaxies. \nThe whole notion of planets "coalescing" WITHOUT such a singularity is absurd, even in a Newtonian universe.\nSo, if you dug a deep enough hole, you would find a hole. Neat-o, huh?
967927
No Moon: Very Very Dark at night, The oceans would to move.\n\n2 Moons: Bright, the oceans and weather would be in chaos\n\n3 Moons: Probably chaotic unhevels major differences from now\n\nThe Moon affects everything on earth: From when planets bloom, the when the seasons change, to tidal movements, to Animal behavior, to cosmic catcher(the moon traps: 80% of all meoters inbound for earth)\n\nThe list is profounding\n\nGood question\n\nI added a few links to put it in science terms
310923
It's orbit is closer to a circle than any other with an eccentricity of less that 1%. It also has a retrograde motion (it rotates from east to west instead of west to east). It always shows the same face to earth in the same way the moon does.
537473
There is something to this.  The net angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system is such that it is fairly stable to the small torques introduced by other planets.  For instance, the orientation of Mars' rotational axis is believed to have changed dramatically over time.  This is shown with numerical models. \n\nThe moon is moving farther away from the earth.  Angular momentum  is transfered by tides.  The tidal bulge of the Earth remains oriented towards the moon.  The earth rotates under this bulge and drags it forward a bit. The gravity of the bulge itself then pulls the moon ahead in its orbit some.  The net effect is the earth's rotation slows, and moon moves to a slightly larger orbit.\n\nAt some point, the Moon's orbital period will be the same length as the Earth's rotational period and the Earth and moon will be tidally locked to one another. \n\nRegardless, the entire system will still have a lot of angular momentum and the Earth will be fairly immune to significant changes to the obliquity of its rotation.
686750
They actually do, but as previously stated the moon is much less massive than the Earth so we don't rotate as much compared to the moon. \n\nIncidentally: the Moon is not rotating around the Earth in a strict sense, it's actually spiraling away at about one inch per year, eventually the Moon will escape orbit. Just FYI.
167554
It is highly unlikly that the earth will ever change the direction of rotation. A strong outside force must be present. But the rotation of the earth is slowing down over time due to the pull from the moon. dont worry if anything does change you will not be here to see it.
54560
The sun does not orbit the Earth (LOL).  The reason we have night and day is because it takes the Earth about 24 hours to rotate (spin).  Each time a side is facing the Sun, it is day, and when it is turned away it is in night.
77245
"The Moon also turns around, but its "day" is a whole month long.  Because it takes as long for the Moon to orbit the Earth as it does for the Moon to rotate once, the same face of the Moon is always pointed at the Earth.  Humans had not seen the "far side of the Moon" until we were able to send spacecraft behind it.  Remember, though, that the FAR side of the Moon is not always the DARK side of the Moon"
236149
The moon spins about an axis. The axis is almost perpendicular to the plane of the moons orbit around the earth. The period of spin (time to complete one rotation about the spin axis) is equal to the period of one revolution around the earth.\n\nThe result is we see one side of the moon.\n\nFor many people this answer is not suffice to understand.\nImagine a cubical building in a plain ground. The four vertical walls are marked A,B,C,D. Imagine the building to be the moon and we are standing infront of the wall marked A. Let us go round the building to see the other walls in the order of ABCD. When we have finished quarter round we can have the full view of the wall B. But imagine that the building rotates itself such that when we finished quarter round it also has rotated quarter round about itself. We will see only the wall A. If the things continue like this we can never see the other walls.When we complete one round the building completes one round so always we see only the wall A.\nDue to librations actually we can see 59% of the moon instead of 50%