Man in the Moon then cooled, becoming smooth, basalt rock. The near side of the Moon, containing these maria that make up the man, is always facing Earth. This is due to a tidal locking or synchronous orbit. Thought to have occurred because of the gravitational forces partially caused by the Moon's oblong shape, its rotation has slowed to the point where it rotates exactly once on each trip around the Earth. This causes the near side of the Moon to always turn its face toward Earth. Man in the Moon The Man in the Moon refers to any of several pareidolic images of
Solar eclipses on the Moon portion of the eclipse was rising. Eclipses were more frequent, tens of millions of years later, eclipses became less numerous as the lunar orbit slowly moved away from the Earth. The view of the sun, even its chromosphere was blocked by the Earth. Around some hundreds of millions of years ago, the Earth blocked all of the Sun's chromosphere, totality was slightly longer than the partial portion. At the same time there were more partial eclipses on the Moon. As the Moon recedes about 3 cm each year, eclipse totality length slowly shrinks and the partial portion slowly lengthens. The