I was skeptical thank you for the confirmation. Especially because the time it takes to lock depends on the relative size of the bodies. Our moon being exceptionally big relatively to our planet, if it has locked, then relatively smaller moons should have locked long before.
Btw, the locking is not perfect, there’s a little oscillation of the moon called libration, so we can actually see about 59% of it over the years.
Pedantically speaking, yes. At least some small moons do freely rotate. But they are all very small and very far from their parent planet. If you were on the surface, you wouldn’t see details.
Mars has two small moons close to it, but neither rotate relative to the surface. They’re also really small and zip about super fast so they’re cool for other reasons.
It’s the heaviest part of the moon which face us. And even when it will reach it’s farthest and definitive orbit ( the moon slowly move away from us), it will still the same face toward us.
It's tidally locked to earth. Earth isn't tidally locked to it. Happens slowly due to gravity and differential mass. Relatively stable satellites end up tidally locked given the time. Pretty sure lack of water/liquids/atmosphere hastens the process.
Mercury orbits the sun every 88 earth days. It spins on its axis every 59 earth days, relative to an outside observer (sidereal day.) That makes the solar day (from sunrise to sunrise) 179 earth days long.
No. I rounded off the numbers. A Mercury day is exactly 2 Mercury years. Which is why it’s “in resonance”. That means that gravity will speed up or slow down the rotation to keep the ratio stable over time.
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