This is the Earth-Moon system as seen by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn in the outer Solar System. Earth is the larger of the two spots near the center; the Moon is to its lower left. This raw, unprocessed image shows several streaks that are not stars. They are cosmic rays that struck the digital camera while it was taking the picture.
Image Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
The HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this picture of the Earth and Moon from orbit around Mars in November, 2016. The reddish area in the center of the Earth’s image is Australia.
Image Credit: NASA
Actually, it’s both. This snapshot shows the moon rising as the International Space Station moves across the foreground.
Image Credit: NASA
This video takes us around the Moon and shows how it is illuminated not only by the brilliant light of the Sun but also by light reflected from the Earth. The trip starts on the side facing away from Earth where part of the surface is brightly illuminated by the Sun but the rest is totally dark. Moving around the Moon, the Earth rises, and its reflected bluish light illuminates the Moon’s surface. This dull glow is the earthshine. (You can clearly see it from Earth when the Moon appears as a crescent in the evening or morning sky.) When the Sun emerges from behind the Moon, the brilliant crescent is seen, but the earthshine is still faintly visible.
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: NASA
This animation using data taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter illustrates how color and displacement maps are used in 3D animation software to paint and model an object like the Moon.At some frequencies, the Moon shines brighter than the Sun. Here’s what the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope saw—
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
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The relative speeds and positions of the Moon, the Sun, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft resulted in this unusual lunar transit where the Moon appears to pause and reverse course.
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
The Chinese Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first successful landing on the Moon’s far side on 3 January. This image from the landing site inside Von Karman crater was taken by a camera on the lander. It shows the desk-sized, six-wheeled Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit 2) rover as it was moving off the lander.
Image Credit: CNSA
A Chinese spacecraft named Chang’e-4 has delivered a lander to the Van Kármán crater on the far side of the Moon. The lander carries a 300-pound rover designed to roam the crater.
Pink Floyd was unavailable for comment.
Video Credit: NASA
The Parker Solar Probe is inbound for its rendezvous with the Sun. On 25 September, it took a look back at the Earth with its wide-field image and snapped this picture. The bulge on the right isn’t part of the Earth. It’s the Moon.
Image Credit: NASA
On 9 and 10 September, 2018, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO, saw two lunar transits as the Moon passed in front of the Sun. A transit happens when one celestial body passes between another and an observer. This first lunar transit lasted one hour, from 2030 to 2130 UTC and covered 92 percent of the Sun. The second transit happened several hours later, 0152 until 0241 UTC and only obscured 34 percent of the Sun at its peak.
From SDO’s perspective, the Moon seems to move in one direction and then double back. It appears to do so because the spacecraft’s orbit catches up and passes the Moon during the first transit.
Image Credits: NASA
These pictures show the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right) as detected by thes Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. The blue areas are the icy regions plotted over images of the lunar surface with the gray scale corresponding to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). As expected, the ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, the shadows of craters. This data is the first direct, definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface.
Image Credits: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA / ASU
On 30 January, 2018, the International Space Station was photographed transiting the Moon.
Image Credit: NASA
This video was assembled from 52 images taken by the Galileo spacecraft after a gravity assist maneuver around Earth on its way to Jupiter.
Images Credit: NASA, Galileo Project
Processing: Gordan Ugarkovic