New Year’s Eve Pre-Dawn Moon Taken by Romeo Esparrago on December 31, 2023 @ Georgetown, TX USA – SPACEWEATHER.COM GALLERY

Rotation of the Moon

An enduring myth about the Moon is that it doesn’t rotate. While it’s true that the Moon keeps the same face to us, this only happens because the Moon rotates at the same rate as its orbital motion, a special case of tidal locking called synchronous rotation. It travels around our planet once every 27.322 days in an elliptical orbit, an elongated circle. The Moon is tidally locked with Earth, which means that it spins on its axis exactly once each time it orbits our planet. Because of this, people on Earth only ever see one side of the Moon. SOURCE: NASA Moon in Motion

SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: DECEMBER 31, 2023

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G1): 2024 could begin with a geomagnetic storm. NOAA forecasters say that minor G1-class storms are possible on Jan. 1st when a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) is expected to hit Earth’s magnetic field. CIRs are transition zones between fast- and slow-moving solar wind streams. They contain CME-like shock waves that do a good job sparking auroras.

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