High-Res Photo Of The Moon Is Swank; Where’s The Face?!
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There’s the face of the moon in all its high-res glory. This picture was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Wide-Angle Camera’s and is the mosaic culmination of over 1,300 fucking pictures. If that isn’t technological welcome to the future bonery, I don’t know what is.
The images were taken over the course of two weeks in December 2010. LRO is in a polar orbit around the Moon – think of it as moving in a north/south direction over the surface instead of east/west. Over time, as the Moon rotates underneath it, LRO can see the entire surface of the Moon. As it does this, the angle of sunlight changes, so care had to be taken when creating this mosaic to make it appear seamless; otherwise shadows would appear to jump suddenly from point to point. If you look carefully you’ll see where shadows point in different directions, but it still looks pretty natural.
But it’s not: when you see the full Moon from Earth, that means the Sun is shining straight down on the Moon – the Earth is essentially directly between the Moon and Sun. That means you don’t see any shadows on the surface when the Moon is full. Pictures of it taken from Earth look flat in that case, because our eyes and brains look to shadows to sense the topographical relief – the ups and downs in the surface. But this image shows those shadows, making it a unique view of the full Moon.
It’s one of the highest resolution pictures of the moon, ever. Outstanding.