The Moon
To celebrate the first Moon landing today (July 20th, 1969) Google have added some NASA moon imagery to the Google Maps interface and created Google Moon. Make sure you zoom right in for a hint at what the moon is really made of 
Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.
43 Responses to 'The Moon' 
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Amazing. Once you zoom all the way in, the moon immediately turns into cheese…!
@chewbaccawokka Wow, how did you find that out….
Ohhhhhhh chewbaccawokka. You just ruined it for everyone
Reminds me of Wallace & Gromit
Lols, well I zoomed in myself before I read this, hehe very good
hai
Did anyone find Apollo 13?
genius
Apollo 13 never landed on the moon, so the only thing to pinpoint would be its proposed landing site, and Apollo 14 basically went to the same area, the Fra Mauro area and Cone Crater.
(info from http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html)
We need this in Google Earth interface!
Next, we need Google Space like this!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthhopper/27318887/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthhopper/27318886/
funny, not a lot of things to watch but funny.
What are you talking about the moon is not made of yellow cheese… it is made of green cheese… Google messed up again. Must be another imaging problem. These guys can’t get anything right ever!!! First UFO’s, the crazy city and river colors, now the wrong color for the moon.
I notice the google earth link goes nowhere.
I hope Google will eventually either make Google Moon availble or make the moon area available in GE…
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be enough detail on this to actually pick out anything other than craters. I’d like to see one of the landing modules or the rovers that are still up there. There shouldn’t be legal/political issues with getting zooms that close like there are in some countries on Earth. NASA already pretty much said any pictures they get are public domain. Are these the highest resolution images that exist of the moon?
Okay the only reason I mentioned the cheese thing is because it’s the only remotely interesting thing about Google Moon, unfortunately.
Im assuming the reason there are no detail views is that these are pictures from nasa that were taken from the apollo missions and nothing has really been taken since of close up moon shots from above/below.. I could be wrong.. Satelites orbit the earth not the moon and there arent any airplanes lying over the moon…. unless there Martians or something lOL
and anyway we never made it to the moon… all those moon surface pictures were taken in arizona remember? LOL
As John Denver used to say, FAR OUT!
and also it’s only 1 small picture of 1 area of the moon stitched together.. scroll to the left or right and it will repeat.. scroll up or down and you will fade to grey…I think the tops and bottoms of the moon pictures could also be made up by Google
Even the Clementine satellite, which orbited the moon, did not have the resolution to see the remnants of the apollo missions. imagine seeing a golf cart on the normal google maps. That’s the kind of resolution you would need.
of course you realize that now one of us WILL find a golf cart….the golf courses are sooooo easy to spot.
Infinity:
It’s the whole moon. In case you don’t remember, the moon is a bit smaller than the Earth, so there’s less area. Plus, like has been pointed out, aerial moon photos only go to so much detail. So there’s less imagery.
Note that when you do scroll to the left or right, you see the seam, but everything on the seam (craters, etc) line up fine.
Maybe we’re missing some imagery near the poles, but I don’t know about that.
FYI you can give Google Moon lunar coordinates and spans in the URL.
Try for example this one for the Tycho Crater from 2001: A Space Oddysey, and center of one of the more noticeable features of the Moon (the huge white “blast pattern” near its southern pole).
when you scroll to the top or bottom, it looks like everything is zoomed in or something like that…
Guys, the “zoomed in” effect happens on the Earth, too. Because neither the Earth nor the Moon are flat. Geez…
I dont think s,keith.. sorry.. and also if it is the whole moon why did they do the confusing step of stitching the same exact square over and over from left to right and vice versa? they shouldve left it without the stitching of the same image over and over… Im not sure on the scale but if you were right given reasonable guessimates the moon would be about the size of the united states or so IN CIRCUMFERENCE!….
http://www.vreal.biz/Images/moon.jpg
that is the moon image they are using.. they dont claim that they are showing the whole moon… But you may be right.. google just made it more confusing then it shouldve been if so….
Speaking of golfcarts “being too small to find”, I’m a Fleming who just learned about the “Double DOppler” in Tampa Bay, Florida. Any chance we could find those? They are a little bigger than a golfcart aren’t they?
Mmm cheese.
They neglected to include the landing spot of Wallace & Gromit!!!
why are people so ignorant? the reason why everything looks so zoomed in near the poles is the same reason why greenland looks bigger than it really is on rectangular map projections.
and the repeating effect is just a simple wrap around. go to google maps earth, either map or satellite view, and zoom out to the farthest level. you’ll see repeats too.
Placemark: Golf Cart?>
It’s a bit hard to tell for sure, but I *THINK* there are golf carts all over the place here. If you look at where the paths are going between holes and parking lots, etc on almost everyone you can see a small white dot. Compared to cars in the area the size *SEEMS* to be right. Anyone else think I might be right? / Google Earth
hahaha looks like I forgot to
ah well the link still works anyway.
infinity:
again, the earth version does the same thing.
been playing around with the google moon thing and found this
http://moon.google.com/kh?v=2&t=t
so far from what i’ve found, if you change v=2 to anything else it fails, and the second part (t=t) you can add any combination of q, r, s, and t after the t to get different images and or zoom levels.
http://moon.google.com/kh?v=2&t=trs
http://moon.google.com/kh?v=2&t=ttqrs
and so on. i’m not sure if we are seeing more data here then what they are currently showing us? Or if it’s just manipulating the images already available. From what I can tell, the part after t= has to start with t otherwise it will fail, and if you add several letters ocassionaly it will prompt you to save a file named “kh”. If you rename it to kh.jpg and open it is an image of the cheese! (or at least it has been for me each time)
This is probably all useless but I found it mildly entertaining!
I don’t know if anybody else has stumbled onto this yet, but apparently Google has some very big plans for the Moon in the works:
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
neat, but why can’t we search directions?
I initially thought that this was only a very small part of the moon, but it turns out I was wrong.
Compare the locations of the landing sites shown here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/apollolanding/ApolloLanding/slide_01.html
You can find all the craters in the right spots, so I think it must show the whole surface (except polar areas)
poster Infinity jests, but he is correct. We have never had a manned trip to the moon. The shuttle is as high as it goes. In regards to Clementine, guess NASA just “forgot” to put a hi-res cam on. The technology was available. A little like “forgetting” the biological instruments on the rover.
bill, you’re saying that the evidence against lunar landings are stronger than the evidence for them? Last time I checked, all evidence from the conspiracy theory camp was pretty thin compared to what NASA has produced. However, lots of people believe in God too, so I guess evidence isn’t that important to everyone.
I believe one of the future missions is to launch a satalitte similiar to the one orbiting Mars to capture possible landing sites for the upcomming Moon missions. They will have a high resolution camera aboard. Nasa said something about being able to see signs of a landing, but probably won’t be able to see rovers and such.
Anybody else notice that the Apollo 17 landing site is in the wrong place? The cirrect site is the red dot at http://homepage.mac.com/stevepur/apollo17.jpg. When I put in the correct coordinates 20.19 N, 30.77 E, the image is centered on the right place. Maybe they got confused by the similar craters to the NNE of the two sites. I sent Google a note on the 20th but no action so far.
i am exiting after seen picture
I wonder if you will be able to see the dark-side of the moon without a flashlight
There isn’t a dark side of the moon, just 47% of so we don’t see from earth.