The Far Side of the Moon: A Photographic Guide (Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy)

The far side of the Moon, also called the "dark side of the Moon" was unknown to humanity until the Luna and Lunar Orbiter pictures were returned to Earth.

Even since then, its nature has puzzled researchers. Now we know that a giant impact struck the near side with such force that it created the “near side megabasin”, opening the way for floods of mare and sending vast amounts of ejecta to the far side. The Far Side of the Moon explains this event and also documents the appearance of the features of the far side with beautiful pictures from Lunar Orbiter.

As in the previous volume, The Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon, the author has taken the original images and cleaned them of system artefacts using modern digital image processing. The best photographic coverage of the far side of the Moon has been the 150 photos taken by the Lunar Orbiter series. The other sources are pictures taken by the Apollo Command Module, which were limited to the equatorial regions, and the Clementine mission, which took pictures at a high sun angle that washed out the topography of the features. Until now, the far side Lunar Orbiter photos have only been available with strong reconstruction lines, but appear here for the first time as complete photographs, unmarred by imaging and processing artefacts.

Also, this is the first book to explain in detail how the far side was deeply covered by ejecta from the Near Side Megabasin and modified by later impacts.

A CD-R accompanies the book, and contains all the enhanced and cleaned photographs for use by the reader in screen viewing, lectures, etc..