Nancy Sleeth, age 11, of Brockville, Ont., for her question:

Does the moon go around the sun?

The earth, the moon, the sun and all the stars are dancing a giant hoedown in the skies. The moon is a satellite and every satellite whirls around a planet. The moon whirls around its planet partner, the earth. The earth whirls around and around its partner, the sun. The sun is a star and all the stars are dancing around in a great cartwheel, the Galaxy.

This giant hoedown dances around faster than you can think. The sun whirls around the starry wheel of the Galaxy at the dizzy sped of 170 miles a second. The earth whirls around the sun at the breakneck speed of 18 miles a second. The moon is about 23,000 miles from the earth. And it dances once around its partner every 27 1/3 days. This hoedown of the heavenly bodies is certainly a very dizzy dance.

The earth takes a your to make one trip around the sun. It dances a wide circle, 180 million miles from side to side. The round journey is 600 million miles long, and as the earth revolves, the moon goes with it. The moon makes curlicues around the earth as the earth makes its bid rind around the sun. So the moon woes travel around the sun, though it dances around in a curly line rather than a straight line.

The moon is a little more than a quarter of a million miles from the earth. The sun is over 93 million miles away from the earth and the moon. Both the earth and the morn are round globes and the sun shines on only half of them at a time. The sire of the moon which faces the sun is in daylight. The side of the earth which faces the sun is in daylight.

But there is even more to this heavenly hoedown. The earth spins on its axis like a top, and so does the moon. The earth spins around once every 24 hours. As it turns, first on one side and then the other faces the sun. The moon spins around on its axis once every 27 1/3 days. Each day and night on the moon is equal to over 27 earth days.

The moon's day and night is equal to one trip around its orbit. It swings around, keeping the same face towards its partner. And that face is half the time in sunlight and half the time in shadow. We see only the area that is bathed in golden sunlight. The area which is in the shadow of night we do not see at all.

Daylight creeps over the moon slowly, very slowly. After all, each lunar day lasts about two earth weeks. It takes almost a month for one day and night to creep across the side of the moon which faces us. And we can watch it. We see the new moon grow to full moon then shrink again. Than the shadow of night falls and spreads over our side of the moon.

Meantime the moon is reeling around the earth. Its orbit takes it between us and the sun, then around to where we are between the sun and the moon. When we are nearer the sun we see the full moon, When the moon is nearer the sun, its far side is in daylight and we see no moon at all. Around and around the sun we go, the earth swinging its partner the moan as they dance along together.