The moon is the Earth's closest neighbor in space. It has inspired many legends and a race for man to set foot upon its surface. You can explore the wonders of the moon on the following pages.
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A harvest moon takes on an orangish glow in the autumn sky. Check out an image of a full moon on the next page.
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A full moon visible through clouds. On the next page you can see an image of Jupiter appearing from behind the moon.
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Jupiter is visible to the naked eye as it passes behind the moon. It might look pretty from afar, but, up close, the surface of the moon is rocky and barren. We'll look at images of the moon's surface on the next few pages.
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Craters on the far side of the moon. Some images have revealed the presence of lava that flowed on the moon millions of years ago. See what these lava channels look like on the next page.
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View from the Apollo 15 spacecraft of craters and snakelike rilles -- likely ancient lava channels or collapsed lava tubes. What is the moon made of? Find out on the next page.
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Cross-section of the moon detailing the interior. Have you ever wondered how the moon was formed? See an artist's conception of the birth of the moon on the next page.
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About 4.45 billion years ago a Mars-size body slammed into the young Earth. The resulting debris coalesced to form the moon. We'll take a look at lunar eclipses on the next few pages.
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The moon slides into the Earth's shadow, casting a reddish glow on the moon. Next, you can see what the moon looks like at the beginning of a lunar eclipse.
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The moon in the beginning stages of a lunar eclipse. Check out the moon right before it disappears from view on the next page.
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Only a small part of the moon is visible during this lunar eclipse. Check out another picture of the moon as it slides into the Earth's shadow next.
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The moon is partly covered in the Earth's shadow during a phase of the lunar eclipse. Sometimes the moon can take on an eerie glow during an eclipse. See it on the next page.
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The moon is seen as it passes through the Earth's shadow. In 1969, man took his first steps on the surface of the moon. You can see this historic event on the next page.
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Neil Armstrong became the first person to leave a footprint on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Check out man's lasting impression on the moon on the next page.
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Man has certainly left his impression on the surface of the moon -- much more than just one footprint. To date, we've landed multiple manned missions, taken tons of pictures, studied its geography and soil, mapped its terrain and even crashed a probe into it on purpose. Next up, we'll see an example of NASA's much more recent efforts to study the moon.
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Who says a satellite can't look like something from a microscope slide? This picture comes from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a robotic spacecraft that launched in June of 2009 and orbits the moon. NASA says this is the highest-resolution, near-global topographic map of the moon ever created. This map shows the surface shape and features of almost the whole moon, on a scale of nearly 328 feet per pixel.
Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU
This image of the moon's north polar region was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). It's a mosaic, stitched together from almost 1,000 images taken over a one-month time frame during northern summer on the friendless rock we call the moon. One of the primary scientific objectives of the LROC is to identify regions of the moon in permanent shadow and near-permanent illumination, and this picture shows the pole when it is best illuminated. Regions shown that are in shadow are considered candidates for areas that remain in permanent shadow.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
On Sunday, July 31, 2011, Expedition 28 astronaut Ron Garan, aboard the International Space Station (ISS), looked out his window and caught his beautiful shot of the moon. Interestingly, he saw it 16 different times! The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, so each day the crew experiences this view about 16 times. In our next picture, we'll see both the ISS and the moon and how familiar they are with each other.
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The International Space Station can be seen here in the upper-left of this picture of the moon. It was snapped in the skies over the Houston area, flying at an altitude of 390.8 kilometers (242.8 miles). The space station can sometimes be seen in the night sky with the naked eye and a pair of field binoculars. Next, we'll see if there are any parking problems on the moon.
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Indeed, the moon has lots of parking space for any fashionable lunar roving vehicle. Seen here is lunar module pilot James Irwin, at work during the Apollo 15 mission. He's parked at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. Apollo 15 launched on July 26, 1971 from the Kennedy Space Center. Next, we'll see one of the most famous astronauts in history.
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In one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon. The picture was taken by Apollo 11's commander, Neil Armstrong. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the moon's Sea of Tranquility (a large plains area) for two and a half hours. Up above them, astronaut Michael Collins orbited in the command module Columbia.
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Before it was safe to try to land a person on the moon, NASA needed to know everything it could about the planet, including how best to land on it. The Surveyor 1 mission was the first of the Surveyors to make a successful soft landing. That proved the validity of the spacecraft's design and affirmed that the landing technique used would work. The Surveyor craft transmitted more than 11,000 pictures and also sent back to NASA information on the load-bearing strength of the lunar soil, the radar reflectivity and the temperature. This image of Surveyor 1's shadow against the lunar surface was taken in the late lunar afternoon, with the horizon at the upper right. Surveyor 1 landed on the moon on June 2, 1966.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
These images show Mercury (right) and the nearside of the Moon at their correct relative brightness. The surface of Mercury is about 15 percent darker at visible wavelengths, on average, than is the nearside of the Moon. Planetary scientists are puzzled by this, because Mercury's surface is lower in iron, the element in lunar rocks that contributes most to absorbing light. Scientists hope future observations will help to solve this puzzle.
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Here once again we see the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) orbiting the moon, in an artist's conception. One goal of the LRO is to find safe landing sites on the moon. It also looks for natural resources that people living on the moon could use. In fact, in 2009, the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), which launched with the LRO, was purposely crashed onto the lunar surface, and the impact data told NASA scientists that water ice grains were present in the plume kicked up by the impact.
Image Credit: NASA
Here we see a mosaic of images gathered on July 8, 2009. On the bottom-left is Hahn Crater (approximately 80 kilometers -- 49 miles -- in diameter), with its terraced walls. Meanwhile, a part of the large impact crater Gauss (170 kilometers in diameter, 106 miles) is in the upper-right corner. NASA believes its floor appears to have been flooded with lava, which solidified and later fractured.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
This picture was taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which was launched in 2010 to study the sun by constantly taking high-resolution photos of it. It was the SDO's first lunar transit when the new moon passed directly between the spacecraft (in its geosynchronous orbit) and the sun. With SDO observing the sun in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, the dark moon created a partial eclipse of the sun. Alongside being a really neat picture, the image also helped NASA scientists measure the characteristics of the SDO's in-orbit telescope against things such as light diffraction and filter support. The data helped them correct for such effects to take even sharper images.
Image Credit: NASA
This image shows a very young impact crater in the moon's Balmer basin. The dark patches are impact melt splashes that were thrown out during the crater's formation. The entire image covers an area 1,302 meters (0.8 miles) across.
Image Credit: Mark Robinson, ASU
Between 1966 and 1967, five lunar orbiter spacecraft were launched in order to gather detailed images of the moon. NASA was using the images to prepare for the planned Apollo landings. The early pictures sent back by the orbiters enabled mosaic shots to be created, such as this rather forbidding moonscape. The 93-kilometer-wide (50-mile) crater called Copernicus, seen at the center, features central peaks rising above the crater floor and rugged crater walls. Next up, we'll see one of the orbiters snap a picture of its home planet.
Image Credit: NASA
Here we see the picture the world received on August 23, 1966. It was the first view of Earth taken by a spacecraft from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was sent to Earth by Lunar Orbiter I and received at a NASA tracking station near Madrid, Spain. Perhaps the orbiter was homesick.
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In 1994, NASA's Clementine spacecraft returned images of the moon. In this picture, we can see the moon illuminated by light reflected from the Earth -- "Earthshine," as NASA called it. The bright glow we see on the moon's horizon is caused by light from the sun's corona (the sun is just behind the lunar edge). Also captured in this picture is Venus, shining brightly at the top of the frame.
Pictures of the moon can be pretty spectacular, but would you want to live there? Check out our list of 10 pros (and cons) of colonizing the moon!
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