Yvonne Harvey, age 11, of Cynthiana, Ky., for her question:

Is it true that the moon has no clouds?

The people who know tell us that the moon has no clouds  but sometimes our eyes tell us that this is not so. We see a little handkerchief cloud blow over the golden face of the moon. Often there is a ,halo circle of cloudy haze around the moon. surely, you would think, these  wispy clouds belong to the moon  but they do not.

Clouds are made from moisture in the air. The moon has no air and no misty moisture to make floating clouds. The clouds that seem to belong to the moon really belong to the earth. They float in the air above our heads. When we look at the moon we must look up through our blanket of air  and sometimes its clouds and misty halos get between us and the moon.  The moon has neither cloudy or partly cloudy days, it is always a cloudless black sky!  The lunar days are always hot and the lunar nights are always very cold!