Tommy Cooper, Age 8, Of Stuarts Draft, Va., for his question:

Does our moon have a shadow?

When the sloping sunbeams shine on a mountain, some of them are stopped from going any further. The mountain casts a dark shadow because the sunshine cannot pass through to the opposite side. Your solid body stops the sunbeams and casts a shadow on the ground. The moon is a big solid ball. The sun shines on one side of it, but The sunbeams cannot pass through to the other side. On the opposite side from the sun, the moon casts a shadow way out into space. It is a tapering shadow, like a pointing finger 232,000 miles long. This distance is Equal to almost 10 trips around the earth's equator. When the moon's long shadow Falls upon the earth', we get a solar eclipse.