First ever photograph of the never-before-seen far side of the moon

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The far side of the moon is its hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the Earth. It was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe at 03:30 UTC on 7th October 1959 at a distance of 63,500 km.

The probe took a total of 29 photos, covering 70% of the far side.

One of them looked like this:

far-side-of-the-moon.gif

The photographs were of low resolution, still many features of this lunar view can be recognized.

Dark patch at upper right: Mare Moscoviense

Dark areas at below and left of center: Mare Marginus & Mare Smythii.

Small dark circle at lower right: Tsiolkovskiy crater.

Its first first seen via human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968.

A more recent picture:

far-side-of-the-moon-2.jpg

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    1 Comment »

    Comment by tommy
    2008-09-29 06:02:43

    Well, at least there is no big alien city that has been spying on us for eons.

     
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