One Year of the Moon in 2.5 minutes

A recent discussion started by our science lead, AstroStu, about photographing the Moon for an entire lunar month, lead me to wonder how this would look as an animation; showing the full cycle of lunar nutation and libration. Also, last month we celebrated our first year of Moon Zoo.

With these two things in mind I found something which I find topical in respect of both lunar cycles and 365 days of the Moon. The following link will take you an animation created by the Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. It uses data from the LRO to show ‘One Year of the Moon in 2.5 Minutes’.
As you will read in the accompanying text, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) has already taken more than 10 times as many elevation measurements as all previous missions combined, thus giving us the global elevation map and the dramatic shadows seen in this animation.

Here is the link to the official NASA page.

I recommend full screen and some moody music for this one.

Enjoy,

Thomas

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Thomas J is a volunteer moderator for the Moon Zoo forum

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