I feel a bit silly now.....

Ok, so I consider myself a well educated person.  I research A LOT for this blog alone before I post most things.

I went to college; I took an astronomy class, but I'm still a wee bit embarrassed by admitting this.

I never really thought about the rotation of the moon and whether we see all sides of it or just one face.

Just think about it........
Have we seen all sides of the moon from Earth?  But the moon does rotate on an axis like Earth doesn't it?
See, that's where I was confusing myself....I was thinking....does the moon ever look different?  Yes, no, wait, I'm not positive....

Recently, I was watching a television program about the universe and the question arose as to whether I've seen only one side of the moon and if the "dark" side of the moon had been explored.

I sat and had to think on it, then realized I had no recollection of seeing more than one view of the moon.  I actually had to look it up today and found out......

a lunar day is 27.3 of Earth days.  So their day lasts almost one of our months and it's in a synchronized rotation to our orbit so that means.....

It is tidally locked to us.....which also means....

It is almost always showing us the same face when we can see it.  There is a slight spin on it's rotation where we don't see exactly the same side of it all the time, but it might as well be, the change is so little.

And I DO remember from my astronomy class that eventually (in 100,000's of years) the moon will eventually slow down so much from it's own orbit that it will "lock" onto one spot on the Earth....that means.....
maybe somewhere far off in the future if you and your sweetheart wanted to see the moon on a date you would have to travel to Paris, France to see it (or Italy, Spain, England, Australia, or wherever it stops).


Just for reference - here's the side we always see....the near side of the moon.



Here's the far side that we on Earth never see.

Also as a tidbit, the first time the far side was photographed was by an unmanned Russian orbiter in the late 1950's (1959).

The first time human eyes saw the far side of the moon was astronauts aboard the American mission Apollo 8 in 1968 when they orbited around the moon.