We don’t often get to see the dark side of the moon, so NASA hooked us up with the rare image.

It’s a common misconception that the moon doesn’t rotate, but the moon actually does once about every 27 days. So why is it that there is still one side of the moon that we haven’t seen? Well, that’s also approximately the same amount of time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth, once. The phenomenon is called synchronous rotation. In all, about 59 percent of the moon is visible from Earth over the course of an orbit. We never ever see 41 percent of the moon – the side that many call “dark.”

The first look at the dark side of the moon was in 1959 taken by the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 spacecraft. The images taken were grainy but we still got to have a closer look than what we see from earth.

NASA has tens of thousands of images that can give us a more detailed and clearer look. Captured from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite as the moon moved in front of the earth while being fully illuminated by the sun.

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Darkside of the moon

The “dark” side actually has a lighter surface than the one we see, (maybe, it needs more sun *badum psst*), but the theory is that the Maria (latin for sea, the smooth and dark spots that cover 17 percent of the surface of the moon) were from asteroid impacts which in turn resulted in magma flooding.

At the end of the day thanks to NASA and technology we have now confirmed there is no Ark carrying an invention capable of ending the war between the Autobots and Decepticons.

You should be following the NASA twitter feed if you were not already. It’s always full of super exciting space and science information, pictures and videos. https://twitter.com/NASA

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