Amazing NASA video shows the moon like you’ve never seen it before

Scott Sutherland
Thu., Sept. 19, 7:13 a.m. EDT. The Full Moon of Sept. is the Full Moon closest to the equinox on Sept. 22, so is called the Harvest Moon. It rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky al

For over four years now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been circling the Moon, giving us an unprecedented look at one of the most familiar objects in the sky.

Along with the incredible amount of measurements and scientific data the satellite has been sending back to scientists here on Earth, LRO has also been taking pictures of the entire lunar surface. NASA recently stitched all those images together, and created a video that gives us a look at something we've never seen before — the rotating moon:

Click here if you can't see the video.

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The moon really does rotate, even though it doesn't look like it from here. Because the moon is 'tidally locked' to the Earth, that means that it always has one face pointed towards us. However, it also means that the time it takes to rotate once is the same as the time it takes to go around the Earth — 27 days.

The only people who have ever seen the far side of the moon for themselves are the various astronauts that flew on the Apollo missions back in the 60s and 70s. This video may not take the place of that kind of experience, but it at least lets us share a bit of the wonder.

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