The Moon Doesn’t Have a Dark Side

Every part of the Moon gets an equal amount of light from the Sun.  The phenomenon known as tidal locking which provides the same rotational period as its orbital period around a partner is what gives the moon its dark side.  Since our Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, it rotates in exactly the same time as it takes to orbit the Earth, thus it will always show the same face to the Earth.  This synchronous rotation where the moon spins around its own axis once for each time it orbits around us on Earth prevents us from seeing what we call the back of the moon.  We can only see 59% of the Moon over the course of an orbit and the other 41% is referred to as the dark side of the Moon.

In order to fully appreciate the last song on the Pink Floyd album Dark Side…