NASA captured, from space, a unique view of the dark side of the moon fully illuminated as it passed between the spacecraft and Earth during July 2015. The images were taken from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) and retaken within its website.
The amazing images of dark side of the moon they were acquired by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a 4-megapixel camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite, which orbits about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.
The images shown above and in the movie below were taken over the course of five hours on July 16, 2015.
The far side of the Moon is different from the side facing Earth
The dark side of the moon it lacks the large, dark basaltic plains that are so prominent on the Earth-facing side. The largest features on the far side are Mare Moscoviense (Sea of Moscow) in the upper left and the Tsiolkovskiy Crater In the bottom left.
The quest to portray the dark side of the Moon
The The far side of the Moon was first observed in 1959., when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first images. Since then, several NASA missions and other space agencies have captured images of this territory from the Earth’s natural satellite.
Even in 2008 the spacecraft Deep Impact NASA captured several photographs of the hidden face of the moon.
Why can’t one side of the Moon be seen from Earth?
The hidden face of the moon It is the hemisphere of this satellite that cannot be seen from Earth because the Moon always has the same face. This is due to the fact that the Moon takes to rotate on itself the same as its translation movement around the Earth.
This part of the Moon is often mistakenly called its dark side, despite the fact that there is no section of the Moon that does not receive sunlight at some point.
