PRATEK

The Moon is a rocky and dusty place. The Moon moves slowly away from the earth at a
rate of 3.8 cm per year, due to the effect of tidal dissipation. The Moon being round, half
of it is lit up by the sun. As it goes around (or orbits) the Earth, sometimes the side that
people on Earth can see is all lit brightly. Each planets have moons. Moons don’t have
their own light. They absorb the sun’s light and reflect the light to another planets.
ANISH
The various shapes of the bright part of the moon as seen during a month are
calledphasesof the moon (Fig. 17.2). Phases of the moon play an important role in our
social life. Almost all festivals in India are celebrated according to the phases of the
moon. For example, Diwali is celebrated on the new moon day; Budh Poornima and
Guru Nanak’s birthday are celebrated on full moon day; Maha Shivratri is celebrated on
thirteenth night of waning moon; Eidul-Fitr is observed on the day following the sighting
of crescent moon. The time period between one full moon to the next full moon is
slightly longer than 29 days. In many calendars this period is called a month.
ADHAV
The moon is a fascinating object for poets and story-tellers. But when astronauts
landed on the moon, they found that the moon’s surface is dusty and barren. There are
many craters of different sizes. It also has a large number of steep and high mountains
(Fig. 17.7). Some of these are as high as the highest mountains on the Earth. The moon
has no atmosphere. It has no water.
KAVIN
In our solar system, neither Mercury nor Venus has any moons at all,
Earth has 1 moon
Mars has 2 moons
Jupiter has 80 moons
Saturn has 82 moons
Uranus has 27 moons
Neptune has 14 moons
Almost all moons in the Solar System keep one face pointed toward their planet. This
tells us it's probably not a coincidence, that there is probably a reason for this to
happen, a physical process that happens to most moons to slow their rotation.