Additional information
by Charles Byrne (Author)
This stunning book is a companion for Byrne's award-winning Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon [Springer, 2005]. It provides the most detailed and beautiful coverage to date of the far side of the Moon. Because the far side is permanently turned away from the Earth and cannot be viewed by Earth-based astronomers, this book is not organized as an atlas but instead as a complete photographic survey. As in Byrne's previous volume, the author has taken the original images of the far side of the Moon and cleaned them of system artefacts using modern digital image processing. This is the first book to explain why the far side of the Moon looks so different from the near side, and it describes the newly discovered 'near side megabasin'.
Back Jacket
This book is a companion to Byrnes's award-winning Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon (Springer, 2005). It provides comprehensive coverage of the far side of the Moon, and is the first book that collects photographs from all five Lunar Orbiter missions: Clementine, Apollo, Luna, Zond, and Nozomi. As in the previous book, the scanning artifacts of the Lunar Orbiter photos have been cleaned.
The photographs show each part of the far side in the most favorable resolution and sun angle. There are many high-altitude oblique photos that provide a feeling of being in space; this book is more like a photographic tour of the far side than an atlas. The striking differences between the near and far side have been a major mystery for astronomers but this book suggests an explanation: a massive early impact on the near side produced the Near Side Megabasin; an impact so large that its rim is on the far side. The floor of this basin established the canvas for the portrait of the Man in the Moon and its ejecta prepared the far side for the rugged array of basins and craters shown in these photos.
Since many professional and amateur astronomers direct their telescopes to the near side of the Moon; these photos provide a unique opportunity to become familiar with the far side!
Author Biography
Charlie Byrne worked as a systems engineer at Bellcomm, for support of the Lunar Orbiter project. He is currently carrying out research about the Moon, and was the discoverer of the gigantic "near side megabasin" that covers nearly all of the near side of the Moon and whose ejecta has established the shape of the far side of the Moon.
