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About the Moon for Kids

You have known what the moon looks like and how it appears in the night sky since you were very young. You have read stories and nursery rhymes about cows jumping over the moon, the man on the moon and the moon being made of green cheese. Now that you are older, you should know more about what the moon is really like. You can tell your family and friends some interesting, true facts about the moon.
  1. No Stormy Skies

    • The moon has no atmosphere. It doesn't snow, rain or get windy on the moon because there is no atmosphere. We humans can't breathe on our own there without an atmosphere, either. On the planet earth, our atmosphere contains the oxygen we need to breathe. There is no breathable oxygen on the moon. So the astronauts who visited the moon had to wear spacesuits because they had to bring their own oxygen to breathe there.

    Less Gravity

    • The moon does not have as much gravity as the earth, but it does have some gravity. If the moon had no gravity, the astronauts who landed there would not have been able to leave footprints or flags. They would have floated away. Actually, the earth has six times as much gravity as the moon. That means an 8-year-old boy who weighs 60 lb. on earth would weigh only 10 lb. on the moon.

    Best Side Forward

    • The moon rotates about its own axis very slowly, while it is also revolving around the earth. It actually takes one complete revolution around the earth for the moon to spin around on its own axis once. This means that here on earth, we always see the same side of the moon. We do know what the "dark" side of the moon looks like. Orbiting spacecraft have sent photos of it back to earth.

    Positively No Cheese

    • Lots of space junk like meteors crash into the moon all the time, forming craters. If it was a planet, most of these objects would slow down and burn up in the atmosphere as they do here on earth. The "face" called the man on the moon that people talk about is actually craters filled with ancient dark lava that is now solid. Also, astronauts brought back moon rocks that prove the moon is made of rock, not green cheese.

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