From a Million Miles Away, NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth

[stevend]

Wow !

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/from-a-million-miles-away-nasa-camera-shows-moon-crossing-face-of-earth

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMdhQsHbWTs

[triton1]

Could,nt put it better myself,thx

[JamesF]

That's rather cool

James

[andrew63]

The Earth looks beautiful... andrew

[JamesF]

At a million miles from Earth, the observing spacecraft will be around three quarters of a million miles from the Moon, so it gives quite a nice idea of the relative sizes of the two bodies (although obviously the Moon will appear slightly larger relative to the Earth).

The article mentions a similar sequence of images taken in 2008 from a distance of 31 million miles, which I managed to find here:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8933

James

[LukeSkywatcher]

The far side of the moon looks boring. Great animation though. Something you dont see every day.

[ghostdance]

Wonderful sequence, thanks for posting, stevend.

Farside boring?   

More homogeneous (?) maybe, but boring?......iss anuvva world mate!

LOL, maybe I'm easily pleased

[JamesF]

Farside boring? 

More homogeneous (?) maybe, but boring?......iss anuvva world mate!

I'm with you on this

I reckon the far side is interesting just because it's quite different from the near side, let alone that it's something most of us will probably never see with our own eyes.

James

[LukeSkywatcher]

OK. Let's go with homogeneous

[niallk]

+1 on the Wow!!

Truly wonderful

[brantuk]

That's a really cool sequence. Fascinating - thanks for posting it up Steven.

[damnut]

Hi Steven,

Great post, thanks for sharing.

[laudropb]

Thanks for a very interesting post. I rather like the view of the far side.

[DemosL]

http://m.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=45710&eocn=image&eoci=related_image

Here's the Earth and Moon from Mercury (see the link above this)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

The far side of the moon looks boring.

When it comes to the two sides of the Moon we definitely get the better looking one. Here's the latest theory as to why the two sides are so different.

[baggywrinkle]

Freat images. The Beeb this morning was rattling on about it being the 'dark side' which as we all know is really astro-photography.....

[JamesF]

Lordy, have you seen where articles have been written about this that allow reader comments?

It really has brought the nutters out in force.

James

[Macavity]

I guess the Selenites must be turning off their lights at night!

Recently came across some ideas re. the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point -

behind the Moon. Location for "dark-side" communications relay satellites.

Maybe even a good starting / storage point for future space exploration...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Gateway_Platform

(We can dream?)