![](\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2015\/10\/a_lunar_pox\/15632779-1-eng-GB\/A_Lunar_Pox_small.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\nThe pockmarked landscape captured in this image from ESA\u2019s SMART-1 mission is the surface of our Moon. Some of the many craters scattered across the lunar surface are clearly visible, records of the many impacts that have plagued it.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt the very centre of this image is the lunar north pole, captured in detail during ESA\u2019s mission. The image shows the characteristic craters of the Moon, present in all shapes and sizes. The largest in view is Rozhdestvenskiy, sandwiched between Hermite to the northeast and Plaskett to the southwest.\n<\/p>\n
\nSMART-1 orbited the moon from 2004 to 2006 collecting around 32 000 images of small areas. In order to create an image covering a large region like this one (60\u00ba in width) and showing the peaks and craters in context, hundreds of these individual images had to be pieced together into a mosaic \u2013 no easy task.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe biggest challenge in creating this mosaic was the changing lighting conditions. Despite the \u201cdark side of the Moon\u201d misnomer, both sides of the Moon do experience night and day in the same way. The far, or \u2018dark\u2019, side has \u2018days\u2019 of two weeks just like the nearside and is \u2018dark\u2019 only in the sense that it was unknown to humans before the arrival of space probes.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt the Moon\u2019s north pole, pictured here, as is the case across all areas of the Moon, the Sun illuminates from different directions. As the Sun moves across the Moon\u2019s sky, new areas are illuminated and shadows spread and move. This means that many of the images used for the mosaic are lit from different directions. This is why, on close inspection, faint squares can be found in the mosaic where two images of different illumination butt up against one another.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe overall effect however, was worth the labour, and the resulting image gives us a fresh perspective on our natural satellite. Astronomers can use images like these to identify peaks on the north pole that are almost always lit and areas deep inside its largest craters that may never see daylight. These areas of constant shadow are of particular interest because frozen within them could be water ice and clues to the history of the Solar System.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\nThe pockmarked landscape captured in this image from ESA\u2019s SMART-1 mission is the surface of our Moon. Some of the many craters scattered across the lunar surface are clearly visible, records of the many impacts that have plagued it.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt the very centre of this image is the lunar north pole, captured in detail during ESA\u2019s mission. The image shows the characteristic craters of the Moon, present in all shapes and sizes. The largest in view is Rozhdestvenskiy, sandwiched between Hermite to the northeast and Plaskett to the southwest.\n<\/p>\n
\nSMART-1 orbited the moon from 2004 to 2006 collecting around 32 000 images of small areas. In order to create an image covering a large region like this one (60\u00ba in width) and showing the peaks and craters in context, hundreds of these individual images had to be pieced together into a mosaic \u2013 no easy task.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe biggest challenge in creating this mosaic was the changing lighting conditions. Despite the \u201cdark side of the Moon\u201d misnomer, both sides of the Moon do experience night and day in the same way. The far, or \u2018dark\u2019, side has \u2018days\u2019 of two weeks just like the nearside and is \u2018dark\u2019 only in the sense that it was unknown to humans before the arrival of space probes.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt the Moon\u2019s north pole, pictured here, as is the case across all areas of the Moon, the Sun illuminates from different directions. As the Sun moves across the Moon\u2019s sky, new areas are illuminated and shadows spread and move. This means that many of the images used for the mosaic are lit from different directions. This is why, on close inspection, faint squares can be found in the mosaic where two images of different illumination butt up against one another.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe overall effect however, was worth the labour, and the resulting image gives us a fresh perspective on our natural satellite. Astronomers can use images like these to identify peaks on the north pole that are almost always lit and areas deep inside its largest craters that may never see daylight. These areas of constant shadow are of particular interest because frozen within them could be water ice and clues to the history of the Solar System.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=234800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=234800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=234800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=234800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}