Sideways Looks at the Moon Like You've Never Seen it Before

By Nancy Atkinson - April 27, 2011 at 7:28 PM UTC | Planetary Science
sideways-moon.jpg

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The Zooites working at the Moon Zoo citizen science project have uncovered some very unique oblique views of the Moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Occasionally, LRO takes "sideways glances" at the Moon instead of looking straight down like the spacecraft normally does. The Moon doesn't really look like this close up, because these images aren't scaled correctly (the width and height pixel scales are different by five times, the Zooites say in the

Moon Zoo Forum

), but they provide a distinctive look at the lunar surface, and things like craters on the side of a hill, -- or perhaps an entrance to a cave -- show up better than in normal images. Have fun looking at some more of these images below, or on the

Moon Zoo Forum.

And don't forget, if you aren't working on at least one of the

Zooniverse citizen science projects,

you are missing out on mountains of fun!

[caption id="attachment_85202" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Another oblique look at the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University"]

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[caption id="attachment_85203" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="LRO image M144564740RC. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University."]

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[caption id="attachment_85204" align="aligncenter" width="552" caption="LRO image M144653115RC. Credit: Moon Zoo, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University."]

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com