A common, though incorrect, statement is, "the moon orbits the earth. " that creates an image of the moon’s orbit that looks like that shown in the figure. (figure 1) the earth's gravity pulls on the moon, causing it to orbit. However, by newton’s third law, it is known that the moon exerts a force back on the earth. Therefore, the earth should move in response to the moon. Thus a more accurate statement is, "the moon and the earth both orbit the center of mass of the earth-moon system. ".