moons around the solar system.

Hello, this question has been bothering me.

I know that our moon doesn't rotate on its own axis and always faces the earth the same way. i find that odd.

i was wondering if other planets 'moon(s)' rotate about their axis.

and if our moon is the only one isn't that a little weird?

Actually, Earth's moon does rotate about its own axis. It does this approximately every 27 days, 7 hours, which is close enough to the moon's orbital period around the Earth to make essentially no difference. The equation isn't quite that simple - it is complicated by uneven distribution of mass on the moon, a non-circular (elliptical) orbit about the Earth, the gravitation pull of the sun, and other factors.

But, essentially, the moon rotates on its axis once per orbit about the Earth.

then how come the same face of the moon faces the earth night after night after night...

Because of the effect on the Moon of tidal forces due to the Earth, the same side of the moon always faces the Earth. The rotation period and the orbital period of the Moon are the same. Therefore, Earth-bound observers can never see the 'far-side' of the Moon. Tidal forces cause many of the moons of our solar system to have this type of orbit.
www.windows.ucar.edu...=/the_universe/uts/moon1.html&edu=high

It does rotate, and many moons in the solar system do the same thing.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Which means that this video is probably worth, what, 10,000? I don't know, but I'm sure there has to be some sort of mark-up...



Pretty straightforward. Never forget that, in situations like this, GIYF: Google Is Your Friend.

[edit on 11-4-2007 by PhloydPhan]

[edit on 11-4-2007 by PhloydPhan]

Well, apparently the YouTube video is resistant to embedding, and I can't seem to get the ATS interface to let me edit my above post. At any rate, a stable URL to the the video is as follows: www.youtube.com...

Sorry for the double-post...

I believe when you posted your youtube link by using the ats button, you inserted the entire http link...This is wrong, just insert the youtube video code, in this case, 0TiMiRdFpWk.

I had the the same trouble when I posted some so thought I'd help.

Thanks for the vid link!

[edit on 11-4-2007 by greatlakes]

It's called tidal locking and yeah there are a number of other moon's that do this. Both Pluto and Charon are tidal locked to each other as well.