William Manely, age 8, of Huntington, Connecticut, for his question:

Exactly how big is the moon?

It looks so small up there that you wonder how our astronauts will be able to find it in all that big, empty sky. A pencil is about a 1/4 inch wide and if you hold it at arm's length and close one eye, it is just wide enough to cover the face of the full moon. But remember, things shrink with distance and faraway things look smaller than they really are. And the moon is about 240,000 miles away from the earth. This is a goodly distance, about equal to ten trips around the earth's wide equator. So the moon is much bigger than it looks.

If we could see both the earth and moon from way out in space, the earth would look as big as a basketball and the moon as big as a tennis ball. From side to side, the golden face of the moon measures 2160 miles. This is a little more than one quarter as wide as the earth. If the earth were hollow, it would have room for 50 moons. And the moon stays the same size all the time    whether we see its whole face at the time of full moon or only the small golden curve of the new moon.