{"id":626163,"date":"2026-10-10T06:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T06:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626163\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T06:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T06:56:08","slug":"apod-2026-october-10-lunar-farside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626163\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 October 10 \u2013 Lunar Farside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: Tidally locked in <a href=\"http:\/\/geosteph-adventuresinearthandspace.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/other-side-of-moon-synchronous-rotation.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">synchronous rotation<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/lroc.im-ldi.com\/educators\/history\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Moon always presents<\/a> its familiar <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/?date=110303\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nearside<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artchive.com\/artwork\/a-sunday-afternoon-on-the-island-of-la-grande-jatte-georges-seurat-1884-1886\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">denizens of planet Earth<\/a>. From lunar orbit, the Moon&#8217;s farside can become familiar, though. In fact <a href=\"https:\/\/lroc.im-ldi.com\/images\/298\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this sharp picture<\/a>, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter&#8217;s wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside. Part of a <a href=\"https:\/\/data.lroc.im-ldi.com\/lroc\/view_rdr\/WAC_GLOBAL\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">global mosaic<\/a> of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest resolution version shows features at a scale of 100 meters per pixel. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the farside looks very different from the nearside covered with smooth dark lunar maria. A likely explanation is that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/articles\/the-two-faced-moon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">farside crust is thicker<\/a>, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form dark, <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/?date=260725\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">smooth maria<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: Sunday&#8217;s Childe\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[271739,111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-626163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}