Last summer I often walked down the rough path to our pond and stepped out onto the dock. There I would lie down on my back and stare up at the night sky. The low rumble of the distant highway was easy to shut out when a shooting star flew by. The bright face of the moon often sparked my curiosity. Looking at it made me think about the telescope that sat in our closet, gathering dust.

A few years ago my grandfather gave my family a nice backyard telescope for Christmas. Unfortunately, it sat in the house for four years because it was "too much work to figure out." This fall I set it up to do a school project with my science teacher. I wanted my project to be centered on the moon. Obvious possible topics were the moon's phases, the rising and setting of the moon, and lunar and solar eclipse phenomena. But after more pondering, I realized that I did not know if the moon, like Earth, rotates on its axis. I thought that I might be able to discover this simply by viewing the moon over several months and recording its appearance. My prediction was that if the moon rotates, the appearance of its surface would change, and if it does not rotate, the surface of the moon would always look the same. I hypothesized that the moon rotates because the same forces that affect Earth should affect the moon.