Of course, it's not actually the first photo from the far side of the moon. It's a photo from this new trip to the moon... to the vicinity of the moon. They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response.EARTHSET.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 7, 2026
April 6, 2026.
Humanity, from the other side. First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon. Photo: NASA pic.twitter.com/ZEBTQA85TY
April 7, 2026
"First photo from the far side of the Moon...."
Posts
58 comments:
Cool picture. Too bad its fake. We all know the earth is flat.
" They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response."
I agree!
They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response.
Well, aren't you just a Debbie Downer?!
Too bad that the overplaying of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" runs through my head with every similar photo.
At least it doesn't bring to mind Pink Floyd's uber irritating alarm clock song (Time).
On X, about one third of replies call moon missions "fake." That's a high percentage.
A lot of these are Trump supporters following his conspiratorial lead through the years. He could end a lot of it with one forceful statement about this mission and the moon landings.
The first time in nearly 60 years
Some people like conspiracies. I dunno why. The moon landing is fake is one. The JFK assassination is another. Although those kooks seem to have died off. The UFO thing never stops. The current one about Charlie Kirk's death is becoming popular.
Some people don't want to deal with the real world. So, they live in fantasy.
The Edge Dragons who hang out at my local are gonna be more tetchy than usual today, I bet.
Just watched a doc on James Webb Telescope. They made point that if you looked up at the sky thru a drinking straw, that little piece hitting your eyes contains 1,000-10,000 galaxies. Not planets, not suns, galaxies/b>
Oops
Wait, what??? Over hyped?? From the Trump White House??? That is so out of character. Great observation it must be because no one is paying attention to the space trip. It has nothing to do with standard operating procedure from your lord and savior.
It’s wonderful and inspirational and the lousy corporate media should hype human achievement like this that pushes the boundaries for exploration. I’m especially pleased to see young kids of both sexes who are excited and inspired by this moon mission. We took enough time off for that stupid “end of history” breather during which civilization damn nearly did a u-turn back to the Stone Age. I’m all in on innovation and improvement for the human race.
A crescent-shaped Earth tonight.
Love it.
did you hear they opened the first restaurant on the moon?
Amazing views but ..... no atmosphere.
There actually is no dark side. It’s just the obverse of the side that faces us in synchronous orbit. Should be about 40% illuminated this time of month.
“Of course, it's not actually the first photo from the far side of the moon.”
And just because the nit is there to pick, I will point out that if you were actually on the far side of the moon, you would by definition not be able to see the earth at all.
I am impressed with the technology demonstrated here- it can't have been easy reviving Stanley Kubrick from his cryo-tube so that he could fake these photos so convincingly.
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon: 14 years on Billboard Charts, 45 Million copies worldwide.
There is no far side of the moon really. As a matter of fact it's all far.
Another cool thing about the far side of the moon: it’s the only place in the entire universe that we can never see directly from earth.
When I fly commercially, some airlines tell me the air temperature at our altitude, which is often incredibly cold. I'm told that the temperature of space is just a few degrees above absolute zero. Pictures like this convey the misimpression that space is somehow a potential human environment. I don't believe it is.
If the Moon was not tidally locked with Earth we'd have started with a very different conception of the universe. We may not have considered the Earth the unmoving center of the universe...maybe...
Religions and mystic surely would have found meaning in the visible face and the phase.
Re: cults
They would still be... are still performing human rites, conflating sex and gender, braying climate catastrophism, etc.
If it's really 1968 again, it's going to be a truly awesome year ...
"They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response."
What? I am confused.
And, so much for my experiment with italics.
A puzzling fact about the far side is the lack of Maria, "seas", which are all over the earth-facing side. In the posted photo, you can see a bit of that.
Lazarus, 1968 again? Where is the Dem National Convention going to be? Who is mayor there?
Alice... Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!"
NASA also released a beautiful shot of the solar eclipse the astronauts witnessed. Really spectacular in a cold, quiet way. We, of course, only see the near side of the Moon from Earth because of tidal locking. The other side remains hidden and that is why it is called the ‘far side’. The far side gets as much sun and is only the ‘dark side’ when we see a full moon.
Thanks Fred, you are right. It is a bit of a mystery. One suspicion is the crust is thicker on the far side preventing volcanic eruptions from creating the giant seas that we see on the earth facing side. Contrary to my own judicial erroneous thought that The far side received more crater impacts apparently that is not true either.
Chicago, again. Should be entertaining.
I’m (happily so) amazed at how many young people are excited by this. My coworker’s son kept texting her photos yesterday from the lunar trip. Another young man at work is planning to see the take off for the moon 2 years from now.
Thank you to everyone who has made this trip possible.
Fantastic photo BTW. Thx for posting it.
Some time ago I learned a theory that the dark spots "seas" on the near side were caused by radiated heat from the early Earth (Hadean Eon). The young Moon was formed after a collision between two pre-Earth planets. The main part became Earth while the rest formed the current Moon. The Moon then melted on the side facing Earth -- the gasses/dust resettled on the thick back side. You can't see the aftermath on Earth because of the water and later tectonic movement.
There was an older theory that the Moon was the product of two smaller moons colliding -- one came up from the rear and smashed its backside in the way that doggies do it.
Oh look. I can see my house.
Where is that giant Nazi moon base they made the Iron Sky documentaries about a few years back?
..."The far side received more crater impacts apparently that is not true either. ..."
Not a whole lot of asteroids have been launched from Earth, though - at least, not that we know about.
.."Oh look. I can see my house..."
I can see my house, and Russia.
There's both a Starbucks and Somali daycare on the dark side of the moon.
"They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response."
This reminds me of "Stardust Memories" for some reason. I looked it up on IMDb quotes and nothing pops up exactly. It's just the vibe. Something one of the sisters in Hannah might've said.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/853307372004573194/1491149234752192583/image0.jpg?ex=69d6a471&is=69d552f1&hm=800414c67bcf9f2b6e3ea0f33548a002ed2943dec48155e489b235d9a98e88d4&
They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response.
… Jim Nance built himself a nice career fucking with The Masters like that…
From some of the comments, it appears to me that 'seeing' the earth from the moon again seems like a nostalgic thing, which I'm interpreting as a very positive group dynamic.
If we can see the good times, at least in retrospect, it may mean we haven't totally given up on a bright future. Only hopeful people get nostalgic.
Something tells to ask AI if that last statement is sound, but I'm not, this time. I need to start getting ready to leave.
The real first Far Side photos…
https://x.com/MissAlly_01/status/2041352034746769678?s=20
"The Moon then melted on the side facing Earth"
But the moon was not tidally locked back then. There wouldn't have been a perpetually Earth-facing side.
Enigma said..."If the Moon was not tidally locked with Earth we'd have started with a very different conception of the universe. We may not have considered the Earth the unmoving center of the universe...maybe..."
Interesting.
I read the beginning of Ptolemy's Almagest a couple of days ago. I was struck by the sophistication of his arguments (not that they were all correct).
If they're on the Dark Side of the Moon show the Moon Nazi Base to prove it!
@Original Mike: But the moon was not tidally locked back then. There wouldn't have been a perpetually Earth-facing side.
NASA disagrees:
Tidal locking is common, but its dynamics are complex. In the Moon’s case, it started at birth. Earth’s Moon is thought to have formed when a massive object collided with Earth early in its history, splattering some of our planet into space. The hot, molten object that coalesced from the ejected material would have been spinning wildly, with its shape changing as it was pulled at by Earth’s gravity. Earth’s gravitational pull distorts the Moon into a slight football shape even today, but this distortion would have been much more dramatic when the Moon was both closer to Earth and less solid.
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/tidal-locking/#:~:text=You've%20only%20ever%20seen,tidally%20locked%20with%20their%20stars.
Thanks, Enigma.
I'm told that the temperature of space is just a few degrees above absolute zero.
Not really. Space is vacuum, for all practical purposes. As such a volume of “space” contains almost no matter, which thus can have no temperature. What matter there is in it (numbers of flying atoms and subatomic particles), at least here in the inner solar system, is typically moving fast, which implies high temperature—but, once again, there's almost nothing of it. So no.
Beyond that, space (i.e., nothing) cannot conduct heat, nor convect heat; only heat radiation can carry heat away from or into a spacecraft through space. Thus both heat and cold are much harder to impart (or get rid of) in space than is true for your experience of flying at high altitude through earth's cold atmosphere.
Yes, the "temperature" in a vacuum, as a single number, is not a very useful concept.
"I am impressed with the technology demonstrated here- it can't have been easy reviving Stanley Kubrick from his cryo-tube so that he could fake these photos so convincingly."
Yes, It is evocative of Kubrick's opening title sequence from more here )
The relative scarcity of of maria on the lunar far-side is a minor bone of astronomical contention. Three or four hypotheses have been suggested since the first photo of the hidden face was taken in 1960. However, the most plausible explanation involves the Earth's gravity directing asteroids into the Moon's near side at higher velocities that those that struct the far side. The far side has more large impact craters than the near side, but only two significant maria, Mare Orientale ("Eastern Sea") and the Apollo Basin. Maria are widely thought to be the result of asteroid impacts that released magma from the Moon's core, flooding regions of the lunar surface and thereby creating those darker and relatively smoother regions. Before the Apollo missions, there was a minority hypothesis that attributed the maria to lunar vulcanism. However, surface sensors left by the Apollo 11 and subsequent landings have provided data that discredits that explanations. If the Moon every had volcanoes, more than 4 billion years impacts have erased them.
Damn. I had a discussion of that picture and Kubrick's imagination, but it vanished. I'll try again.
The opening title sequence from 2001 exaggerates the relative sizes of those three celestial bodies, mainly for artistic effect. There is no point in space that can replicate that scene precisely. In fact, most people have a distorted mental image of true scale of the Earth-Moon system, probably due to the constraints of the printed page and the television screen. The separation between our home world and its satellite is approximately 60 time the circumference of the Earth. Proportionally, that a long distance -- much more than the apparent separation between Jupiter and the four Galilean moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The space is enough to contain all the other planets of the Solar System lined up side by side with room to spare. In relative terms, our Moon is the largest satellite in the Solar System compared to its parent planet, but the Moon is still smaller than most people appreciate. Picture it this way.
The moon, diameter-wise, easily fits between North America's two coasts, but it isn't diameter (nor volume) but area which is a world's most pertinent geometric feature that people face—and in area the moon falls just a little short of Asia, earth's largest continent by far—or one can think of the two American continents, with North America looking back when one glances at the moon, while South America is facing the other way (or vice versa).
Peachy at 10:08 reveals a sense of humor not previously apparent.
Caltech's terrific video series (+ book(s)) on classical mechanics The Mechanical Universe—hosted by physicist David L. Goodstein, divided in 54 half-hour episodes—is very worthwhile as a whole, but given Artemis II happening now, see especially episode 24: “Navigating in Space”.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.