Look up at the moon on any clear night and you’ll see a cratered world shining down on you, in some phase of illumination or perhaps even full and round, with a few lighter or darker areas but for the most part all in cool, bright shades of whites and greys. The moon’s real colors…
Category: The Moon
Some Craters are the Pits
Look inside a 300-foot-deep pit on the Moon
Life Imitates Art
Here’s a beautiful photo taken by a crew member aboard the International Space Station showing the crescent moon above Earth’s atmosphere, a hazy band of bright blue separating our world of life from the inhospitable harshness of space. An amazing shot, but what’s even cooler about it is that it looks remarkably like an illustration…
Sinking the Shot
Alan Shepard may have played some moon golf during his visit in 1971 but even he wouldn’t have been up to par with this course. 😉 This photo shows the trail of a house-sized (33-foot-wide) lunar boulder that has rolled downhill and come to rest inside the rim of a crater. The image was taken…
Between Two Worlds
The International Space Station is seen passing across the face of the Moon in this beautiful image, taken on April 5 by Fernando Echeverria about 15 minutes before the launch of Discovery. In photography timing really is everything! The Station’s altitude ranges from 173 to 286 miles above the Earth, traveling at a speed of…
Solar Cover-Up
ESA’s new Proba-2 solar observation satellite captured this stunning image of the annular eclipse that as visible across Africa and Asia on January 15. In an annular eclipse the moon is further from the Earth than it would be during a total eclipse, so part of the Sun remains visible. This eclipse has been the…
Mountains of the Moon
Taken by the LROC camera on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this image shows a detailed look at the mountains within Cabeus Crater – the region where the LCROSS’ Centaur stage rocket impacted to send up a plume of water-rich lunar soil. Many of the shadows seen here are permanent fixtures. The Moon’s orbit…
Water On The Moon!
The conclusive results are in….the LCROSS mission has successfully found water on the lunar surface! Although the plume from the satellite’s upper-stage rocket impact into Cabeus crater at the moon’s south pole was not immediately visible, there was still enough ejected material to be analyzed by LCROSS’ instruments. After reviewing the data over the past…
KAGUYA’s Lunar Legacy
On Monday JAXA released more footage taken by the KAGUYA orbiter during its lunar mapping mission. KAGUYA spent several months flying over the moon at altitudes ranging from 10-50km (about 6-30 miles) taking video with its high-definition camera before finally ending its mission and crash landing onto the moon on June 10, 2009. The sequence…
Eagle’s Landing Site
This is what the Apollo 11 landing site looks like today from lunar orbit via NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Visible here is the remaining descent stage of the lander, a couple of left-behind scientific experiments and the tripod of a television camera as well as a dark trail of footprints to “Little West” crater left by…
In Fact, It’s Cold As Hell
When you look up at the moon, you’re looking at what is now believed to be the coldest place in the solar system, according to recent data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Craters at the moon’s south pole stay in constant shadow, their rims blocking sunlight from reaching their interiors. In these areas of permanent…
Rolling Stones
This closeup of a mapping image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rolling, bouncing trails left by lunar boulders as they travelled down the slopes of Tsiolkovskiy Crater’s central peak. These boulders, several meters across, lost their footing in the dusty lunar soil at some point and rolled downhill to where they lay now….
Lights in the Dark 