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The Moon's Orbit and Rotation. It takes the Moon 27.322 days to go around the Earth once. Because of this motion, the Moon appears to move about 13 against the stars each day, or about one-half degree per hour.
This type of motion is called rotation, so the amount of time it takes an object to rotate is called a rotational period. It takes the Earth 23 hours, 56 minutes to rotate on its axis. We call the rotational period of Earth a day. Mars takes just a little longer to rotate, at 24 hours, 37 minutes. The Moon is much slower than either Earth or Mars. It takes over 655 hours for the Moon to turn just once on its axis--that's more than 27 days! Second, all the planets and moons in our solar system also move around other things.