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Picture of the month November 2010 

 

 

Picture taken at Kampenhout on October 21, 2010.

 

The Moon faces always the same side towards the Earth. Not by coincidence and in astronomy also labeled as synchronous rotation, this is a stable configuration of tidal locking. So all pictures taken from the Earth show the same craters with eye catcher Copernicus on the southern side. We had to wait until a spacecraft was launched in 1959 to see what was on the other side and it showed a remarkable difference of much more craters (and fewer flat surfaces or  "maria"), most probable to the fact of a less higher concentration of heat-producing elements.

From the earth's point of view, perhaps the monotony of the same Moon can sometimes be broken when an aircraft visually closes our natural satellite, in this case reflecting the engine blast.

More pictures of planes encountering the Moon or Sun via this link


List of pictures of the month