World N.o3, Chinese leave footprints on the Moon !

[cnleio]

Why the craters look like hills and make me feel that the shadows of the rover and the lander are in wrong direction.

1. The moon can not spin, always one face to our Earth.
2. The Sunshine can not vertically illuminate the moon, the moon light that we saw on the moon is reflected light from the Earth.

Moon vistas, made in China: New pictures of Jade Rabbit rover on the moon

Chasing the horizon: The sky over the Moon appears inky black in this picture showing the Jade Rabbit rover trundling across the lunar surface taken from the Chang'e 3 lander and released today by Chinese scientists.

Great leap forward: The successful soft-landing of the Chang'e 3 lander in December made China the third country to complete a lunar rover mission after the United States and Russia

The country's achievement comes just a decade after it first sent an astronaut into space, and has got the Chinese leadership on a patriotic high.

The mission is seen as a symbol of China's rising global stature and technological advancement, as well as the Communist Party's success in reversing the fortunes of the once-impoverished nation..

 

[gambit]

1. The moon can not spin, always one face to our Earth.

What science classes have you taken in China?

Curious About Astronomy: Does the Moon rotate? Are there other moons that always keep one face toward their planet?

I noticed that out moon doesn't rotate as it orbits our earth. Is our moon the only moon in our solar system that doesn't rotate?

Be a little careful . . . the Moon does rotate. If you stood on the Moon, the stars would rise and set, just like they do on Earth, except that a lunar day is a month long, the same as the Moon's orbital period. The Moon rotates at just the right speed so that it always keeps one face pointed toward the Earth, which seems like a pretty big coincidence, doesn't it?

Moon Rotation

The rotation of the Moon is a strange situation. It takes the same amount of time for the Moon to complete a full orbit around the Earth as it takes for it to complete one rotation on its axis. In other words, the Moon rotation time is 27.3 days, just the same as its orbital time: 27.3 days.

What this means to us here on Earth is that the Moon always presents the same face to the Earth. We only see one side of the Moon, and not the other. And if you could stand on the surface of the Moon, the Earth would appear to just hang in the sky, not moving anywhere.

APOD: 2013 September 16 - Rotating Moon from LRO

No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side.