Mike McNett, age 15, of Springfield, Oregon, for his question:
On the moon which way is up?
We are held to the surface of the earth by the force of the earth's gravity. The surface gravity of the moon is merely one sixth the gravity of the earth but never¬theless it works the same way. A person standing on the lunar landscape will be pulled by gravitational force that seems to come from a point at the very center of the solid moon. Wherever a spaceman stands on the moon, he will think of this point below his feet as the down direction. Since the opposite of down is up, he will assume the up direction to be directly above his head. From where he stands, for example, the earth will be up in the sky.
Other basic directions on the moon will be no more confusing than they are upon the earth. The north and south poles correspond with our own. However, a telescope picture may mislead you. The photograph reverses the image and gives us art upsidedown picture of the moon.