domingo, 1 de mayo de 2011

Sideways Looks at the Moon Like You’ve Never Seen it Before


Sideways Looks at the Moon Like You’ve Never Seen it Before



An oblique look at the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
The Zooites working at the Moon Zoo citizen science project have uncovered some very unique oblique views of the Moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Occasionally, LRO takes “sideways glances” at the Moon instead of looking straight down like the spacecraft normally does. The Moon doesn’t really look like this close up, because these images aren’t scaled correctly (the width and height pixel scales are different by five times, the Zooites say in the Moon Zoo Forum), but they provide a distinctive look at the lunar surface, and things like craters on the side of a hill, — or perhaps an entrance to a cave — show up better than in normal images. Have fun looking at some more of these images below, or on the Moon Zoo Forum.
And don’t forget, if you aren’t working on at least one of the Zooniverse citizen science projects, you are missing out on mountains of fun!

Another oblique look at the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

LRO image M144564740RC. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

LRO image M144653115RC. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.