Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site looking.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!looking!brad From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: net.games.trivia Subject: Re: heavenly bodies (lunar rotation) Message-ID: <157@looking.UUCP> Date: Wed, 13-Jun-84 00:00:00 EDT Article-I.D.: looking.157 Posted: Wed Jun 13 00:00:00 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 14-Jun-84 01:43:49 EDT References: <1130@sdcrdcf.UUCP> Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont Lines: 32 And I had the impression that net readers had a slightly higher level of education than average! "The moon has no tangential velocity wrt its surface" (I hope this is a joke, Mr. Wheeler) For those of you who sill aren't sure. Say you look to your right and you see me looking at you. Now I move around to your left, so that I am still looking at you. Clearly I have rotated 180 degrees because I am now facing in the reverse direction. From the moon, the stars circle the sky once every ~28 days. (as does the sun, as even we can see from the Earth watching the light-dark line change) Just how does this miracle occur. No doubt the few of you in the dark ages claim that the sun and stars must go around the moon! I assume you will now tell me the Earth doesn't spin because communications satellites stay in the same place all the time, and we always present the same face to them! And how odd it is that by giving the moon some spin we would cause the stars to stop in the lunar sky! Remember heliocentrists, the moon does NOT orbit the Earth, they both orbit each other. There is nothing special about the viewpoint here. As I once heard it put, the Earth is a satellite in the Lunarsynchronous orbit (although that's a bit too far). -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 886-7304