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side of the moon, you'd see just the opposite: 90% of the lunar disk in shadow and 10% illuminated by sunshine. • The moon has a day side and a night side just as Earth does. We on Earth say that the moon waxes and wanes, but this is, in a way, a charming fiction. The reality is that the moon is always half illuminated, just as Earth is. From Earth, we see various fractions of the moon's day side, as our vantage point of the day and night sides of the moon shift as the moon orbits around Earth. • Now maybe you can see why the far side of the moon is not the same thing as the dark side of the moon. • The near side of the moon - the side that we see from Earth - is sometimes illuminated, and sometimes dark. The far side of the moon - the part that we don't see from Earth - is also sometimes illuminated, and sometimes dark. A full half of the moon is always illuminated, but this day side shifts around and around the entire globe of the moon - just as Earth's day side shifts around and around our globe, (Continued on page 33)
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