Far Side of the Moon

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.