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Did you ever look at the Moon and think you could
see a face? Sometimes dark spots on the Moon look
like eyes, a nose, and a mouth. People used to talk
about “the man in the Moon.” They would joke about
the Moon being made of cheese with holes in it.
ANCIENT VOLCANOES
If you went to the Moon, you’d see the dark-colored
maria. Scientists think the dark gray rock is lava (melted
rock). They believe that billions of years ago, red-hot rock
gushed up from volcanoes on the Moon. The lava flowed
over the Moon’s surface. It filled in low places, including
some of the big craters. Then the lava cooled to make the
Moon’s gray rocks.
The lava also left round hills on the Moon called domes
and carved grooves called rilles.
ROUGH HIGHLANDS
There are rough and mountainous places all over the
Moon. Scientists call these places highlands.
There are highlands on the far side of the Moon but almost
no maria. Only one side of the Moon faces Earth, so you
can never see the far side of the Moon. Scientists learned
what the far side looks like from pictures taken by orbiting
spacecraft.
Days and nights are long because the Moon turns very
slowly. It takes the Moon about 27 days to make one turn.
Earth turns once every 24 hours.
The Moon reflects light from the Sun. How you see the
reflected sunlight depends on where the Moon is. The
Moon orbits (goes around) Earth. Sometimes it is between
the Sun and Earth, and you can’t see any reflected
sunlight. This is called the new moon.
The rest of the time, you see only part of the reflected
sunlight from the Moon. The reflected sunlight looks like
slivers of Moon. It takes about 27 days to go from a new
moon to a full moon and back to a new moon again.