Friday, June 24, 2011

The Moon in 2.5 Seconds

This video of the Moon is from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and uses data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) to compresses one month into 12 seconds and one year into 2.5 minutes. This is how the Moon will look to us on Earth during the entire year of 2011. We always see the same side, or face, of the moon, but because of the tilt of the Moon's axis and the shape of its orbit we see that face from slightly different angles over the course of a month and year. This "wobble" isn't apparent to us as we see the moon every night and don't think about how it was the night(s) before, but over the course of this video it is apparent.



http://www.universetoday.com/86613/one-year-of-the-moon-in-2-5-minutes/#more-86613

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails