The Moon's North Pole

This image of the moon’s north polar region was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC. One of the primary scientific objectives of LROC is to identify regions of permanent shadow and near-permanent illumination. Since the start of the mission, LROC has acquired thousands of Wide Angle Camera images approaching the north pole. From these images, scientists produced this mosaic, which is composed of 983 images taken over a one month period during northern summer. This mosaic shows the pole when it is best illuminated, regions that are in shadow are candidates for permanent shadow.

Europe – red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both.

Full set on Flickr

Metal scrappers with remnants of a rocket in Altai

Via sokol-off

Residual water ice in Vastitas Borealis Crater

Via European Space Agency

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyHiMORy9tU

In the lower left portion of this image, the Earth can be seen, as well as the much smaller Moon to Earth’s right. When MESSENGER took this image, a distance of 183 million kilometers (114 million miles) separated the spacecraft and Earth. To provide context for this distance, the average separation between the Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).

Via Messenger, NASA

NASA Earth Image of the Day

See it for yourself via Google Earth