Posted on 01/03/2016 11:01:19 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Explanation: On the Moon, the Earth never rises -- or sets. If you were to sit on the surface of the Moon, you would see the Earth just hang in the sky. This is because the Moon always keeps the same side toward the Earth. Curiously, the featured image does picture the Earth setting over a lunar edge. This was possible because the image was taken from a spacecraft orbiting the Moon - specifically the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). In fact, LRO orbits the Moon so fast that, from the spacecraft, the Earth appears to set anew about every two hours. The featured image captured one such Earthset about three months ago. By contrast, from the surface of the Earth, the Moon sets about once a day -- with the primary cause being the rotation of the Earth. LRO was launched in 2009 and, while creating a detailed three dimensional map of the Moon's surface, is also surveying the Moon for water and possible good landing spots for future astronauts.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State U./Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter]
“Absolutely beautiful” doesn’t come close to doing it justice.
:’) I wholeheartedly agree. In that documentary on Apollo (the one from Ron Howard’s company), Alan Bean states that, since returning from the Moon, not once has he complained about the weather, he thinks it’s great that we have weather. He was overjoyed just to splash around in the Pacific upon their return after the Apollo 12 mission.
http://www.alanbeangallery.com/
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/bean-al.html
In the Shadow of the Moon - Extra Behind the Shadow, extra footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUu6LZXE-uc
Awesome.
What a sight! Worth going to the moon just to see that.
“Absolutely beautiful†doesn’t come close to doing it justice.... Agree, until you get close up and see how f—ked up it’s inhabitants are.
Big blue marble means new moon as seen from earth.
Pale Blue Dot
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan
When I was in the Army in the 80’s I was almost assaulted by my “friends” when I told them the dark side of the moon is not always dark.
Ah, the hope of public education....
Actually, because of lunar librations (not libations), about 59% of the lunar surface can be seen at one time or the other from earth. That means that places near the edge of the near side of the moon sometimes have the earth visible, sometimes don’t...so the earth would rise and set from those locations (but would never be very high above the lunar horizon).
Libya looks better from a distance.
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