This computer simulation video, from the
Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, uses data from the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to visualize how the
Moon will look to us on Earth during the entire year of 2011. It compresses one month into 12 seconds and one year into 2.5 minutes. While the moon always keeps the same face to us, it’s not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt in its axis and shape of its orbit, we see the moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month, and the year. Normally, we don’t see how the moon “wobbles” in its orbit, but seeing the moon’s year this quickly, we can see the changes in
libration and axis tilt — as well as the most noticeable changes, the moon’s phases.
