Astronomy Picture of the Day: The whole of the Moon

Posted: June 19, 2017 by tallbloke in Astronomy, solar system dynamics

Showing all of the Moon including the side we never see from Earth. Composite from images taken by the Lunar Orbiter

Nice!

Comments
  1. A C Osborn says:
    June 19, 2017 at 9:24 pm

    Is it just the difficulty of photographing the dark side is there really that much difference in the surface?

  2. Martin Miller says:
    June 19, 2017 at 9:43 pm

    The difference between the side(? is that correct for a sphere) we see and that we don’t is striking. I ‘m wondering if the “dark side” is more exposed to impacts explains the difference or was it just a result of how it originally formed. I would think lava flows would be equally dispersed. But I’m just speculating from a position of ignorance.

  3. oldbrew says:
    June 19, 2017 at 10:57 pm

    ‘The difference between the side(? is that correct for a sphere) we see and that we don’t is striking.’

    Maybe the Earth has an effect on the Moon. Tides tell us the opposite is true and Earth has far more mass than the Moon.

  4. tallbloke says:
    June 20, 2017 at 5:43 am

    The side facing us has many more ‘Mares’ – seas of dust. Why the surface regolith should have become pulverized like this on only one side is a mystery.

  5. The Badger says:
    June 20, 2017 at 9:39 am

    An excellent visual representation but the resolution is too low to see those massive vertical structures near to the alien mining sites. Perhaps we can get Elon to organize a visit and we can then back engineer some nice gravity powered heat engines and avoid having to do all that work into the Loschmidt effect ourselves.

  6. oldbrew says:
    June 20, 2017 at 10:16 am

    I stopped the video after 10 seconds and it displayed a link to a video which offers this howler:

    Fresh water is denser than seawater but the effect is very small:

    Calculated out, the ocean rises by about 49 micrometers each year due to melting icebergs. That’s not a lot of sea level rise—sea level globally is rising by about 3 millimeters (or 3,000 micrometers) per year—but the scientists say it deserves monitoring. [bold added]

    Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/icebergs-contribute-to-sea-level-rise-27691905/

    Yet another attempt to alarm the masses.