October 5, 2017
STINKIN' COMMIES...:
Far side of the moon revealed, half a century ago : The images are patchy and blurry, but the first photos of the moon's far side were still a revelation. Tim Wallace, 10/05/17, cOSMOS)
For as long as humans have been able to appreciate the night sky, we have looked up at a more-or-less unchanging moonface. That's because the Moon is locked in what is known as synchronous rotation: it orbits the Earth once every 27.322 days, and revolves on its axis at almost the exact same speed. It wasn't always this way, but the gravitational effect of the Earth's tidal forces has slowed the rotation over time. The effect is called 'tidal locking' or 'captured rotation'.All that changed when Luna 3 flew around the Moon's far side. With its fly-by timed to ensure the hidden hemisphere was facing the Sun, it passed within 64,000 kilometres of the surface and snapped 29 images with a photo-television camera over 40 minutes. Of those images, 15 (or 17, accounts vary) were successfully transmitted back to Earth. [...]Through the quality of the Luna 3 images was poor, they provided the means to create the very first atlas of the Moon's far side. Published by USSR Academy of Sciences the following year, the atlas catalogued 500 distinguishable geographic features. Others followed.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2017 8:27 PM