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Some cheeses are luminescent. (thelemmy.club)

submitted 3 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 17 points 3 days ago

I'm half confused. Light source - the sun, just take it when the moon is in it's new moon phase (side facing earth is dark, side facing sun is light).

But the moon is tidally locked to earth, we always see the same side, so what is taking the photo?

Artemis II visited while the far side was dark, so I guess this is an old tweet otherwise why would NASA be releasing it now?

Happy to be told I'm dumb if I got something wrong...

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago

What is visible isn't actually the far side, they're less than 90 degrees around to the "left."

This feature circled in red is called Grimaldi crater:

It is visible from the Earth; here is the view of the Moon you're probably used to seeing with Grimaldi again circled in red:

[-] generallynonsensical@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I want to make a 2001:ASO reference so bad, with your username and the context and all, but I can't for the life of me muster any cleverness. I also would love to know the answer. So let's be dumb together, Dave.

Edit: Solar eclipse! Thanks someone further down the thread. Looked it up and it appears they had a 54-minute solar eclipse and 40 minutes of radio silence. Must have been amazing.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 8 points 3 days ago

Well I am a step closer to the answer. Here a similar photo taken on the Artemis II mission with the same identifying features: https://images.nasa.gov/details/art002e009212

In this fully illuminated view of the Moon, the near side (the hemisphere we see from Earth), is visible on the right. It is identifiable by the dark splotches that cover its surface. These are ancient lava flows from a time early in the Moon’s history when it was volcanically active. The large crater west of the lava flows is Orientale basin, a nearly 600-mile-wide crater that straddles the Moon’s near and far sides. Orientale's left half is not visible from Earth, but in this image we have a full view of the crater. Everything to the left of the crater is the far side, the hemisphere we don’t get to see from Earth because the Moon rotates on its axis at the same rate that it orbits round us.

Long story short, like 3/4 of what is in this photo is the near side of the moon.

As a side note, the coloured image on the left of the OP appears to be this image that reddit detectives have decided was edited by OP. No one has found that coloured version on any NASA release.