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The “clearest picture in the world of craters on the Moon” has been revealed.
The stunning image is courtesy of a Californian astrophotographer who combined ‘moon phase’ snapshots to create it.
Andrew McCarthy stacked thousands of photos of the Moon to create the masterpiece.
It took two weeks of images of the crescent Moon because this is a time when the number of visible illuminated surfaces increases.
This increased light and good positioning of the ‘lunar terminator’, the line between the light and dark sides of the Moon, has made the craters look more pronounced.
It is also said to make them appear elongated.
McCarthy called the plugin ‘All Terminator’ and described it as a “beast of a project”.
He wrote on his Instagram @cosmic_background: “This moon may seem a little funny to you, and that is because it is an impossible scene.
“From two weeks of crescent moon images, I took the section of the image that has the highest contrast (just before the lunar terminator where the shadows are longest), aligned and blended them to show the rich texture across the entire surface. “
He added: “This was exhausting, to say the least, mainly because the moon does not align day after day, so each image had to be assigned to a 3D sphere and adjusted to ensure that each image was aligned.”
Fortunately for us, you could try creating another image if you get good feedback.
The image shows many of the Moon’s impressive craters.
The Moon – explained our closest neighbor
This is what you need to know …
- The Moon is a natural satellite, a space body that orbits a planet
- It is the only natural satellite on Earth, and it is the fifth largest in the Solar System.
- The Moon is 2,158 miles wide, approximately 0.27 times the diameter of Earth
- Temperatures on the Moon range from minus 173 degrees Celsius to 260 degrees Celsius
- Experts assumed that the Moon was another planet, until Nicolaus Copernicus expounded his theory about our Solar System in 1543.
- He was finally assigned to a “class” after Galileo discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610.
- The Moon is believed to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago.
- The strength of its gravitational field is about one sixth of Earth’s gravity.
- The Earth and the Moon have “synchronous rotation”, which means that we always see the same side of the Moon, hence the phrase “dark side of the Moon”
- The Moon’s surface is really dark, but it appears bright in the sky due to its reflective surface.
- During a solar eclipse, the Moon covers the Sun almost completely. Both objects appear to be similarly sized in the sky because the Sun is 400 times larger and further away.
- The first spacecraft to reach the Moon was in 1959, as part of the Lunar program of the Soviet Union.
- The first manned orbital mission was NASA’s Apollo 8 in 1968.
- And the first manned lunar landing was in 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
In other news, a ‘nearby’ star in our galaxy may have emitted a Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts (FRB).
NASA has a list of 22 asteroids that could hit Earth.
And, Elon Musk has plans to make his Starlink satellites “invisible to the naked eye.”
Would you like to go to the moon someday? Let us know in the comments …
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