Q: What happens to the Moon during New Moon?
Michael Gardner
Dublin, Ireland
A:From Earth, we only ever see one side of the Moon. This is because the time it takes the Moon to rotate around its own axis happens to be the same amount of time it takes for the Moon to orbit Earth: one month. This phenomenon is known as tidal locking. Since we only see one side of the Moon, how much of the Moon is visible to us over the course of a month depends on which part of the Moon is reflecting light from