I was wondering if Earth has been able to take any pictures of the dark side of the Moon, and found a few on the internet. Could the astronomy buffs point me to better websites to have a look some more, and also to check when they were able to capture the images? It will be much appreciated.
Hi All
Before Apollo missions both USA and USSR had missions to picture the far side of the moon. The USSR missions where called Luna.
Later all Apollo missions who went to the moon, landing or not Landing took pictures from the dark side of the moon.
I suggest you read the article Far Side of the moon in Wikipedia. Specially the exploration section.
Hi Ernst and anyone else who can help,
I am trying to visualise this - Except for the Moon, is Earth able to see all the sides of the other planets? Or are we fixed in what we can see from Earth at all times?
I will try and get in touch with the local astronomy club to see if they might be able to answer some of these questions for me.
Hi Everyone
There is a similar situation between Mercury and the Sun. Since the time it takes for Mercury to go around the Sun is equal to the time for it to turn around itself (it's axis). Mercury has always one side towards the Sun and one side far from it. so one side is always day and the other side is always Night. there is a narrow twilight zone in between that could have both day and night.
I would like to read more about the situation between Mercury and the Sun. Could you point me in the right direction, please?
here is a good explanation about mercury and it's orbit and rotation :
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mercury/in-depth/
I need to correct the statement above; since Mercuries speed revolving the Sun changes, the phenomena I mentioned above happens in short periods of time. It takes around 2 Mercury years (176 days) for mercury to have a complete day. So a day on Mercury will be about 88 Earth days. In a short period of several days the sun seems fixed in Mercuries sky.