Discover the cosmos!
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is
featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Explanation:
What’s different about this Moon?
It’s the terminators.
In the featured image, you can’t directly see any
terminator —
the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night.
That’s because the image is a digital composite of 29 near-terminator lunar strips.
Terminator regions show the longest and most
prominent shadows — shadows which, by their contrast and length, allow a flat photograph to appear three-dimensional.
The original images
and data were taken near the
Moon
by NASA’s
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Many of the Moon’s
craters
stand out because of the
shadows they all cast to the right.
The image shows in graphic detail that the
darker regions known as maria are not just darker than the rest of the
Moon — they are flatter.
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