Comment by KineticLensman
18 days ago
> the fully illuminated “dark side”
Personally, I don't find the phrase 'fully illuminated “dark side”' to be a convincing alternative to the physically more accurate term 'far side'. Of course NASA has only just emerged from the Earth's dark side as I write this (UK here, mid-morning), so I'm not expecting an immediate response from them.
And yes, I do know that 'side' is itself not entirely accurate because of libration [0] but that's a different hill to die on.
Agreed.
The far side is the darker side, though, at lunar night. Poetic proof: "The Earth shine might illuminate the light side of the Moon a little during the long night" (from Jules Verne, All Around the Moon https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16457/pg16457-images.ht...)
I do like poetry, but if we are looking at a crescent moon, in our night, it means that the bulk of farside is facing toward the sun, and will therefore be brighter than nearside
This describes lunar day on the far side of the moon, right? Excuse my ambiguity; I was comparing lunar nights only (inspired by the Jules Verne quote):
The far side is darker during lunar night (lit by starshine only; Full Moon on Earth) than the near side during lunar night (New Moon on Earth), because it receives both star- and max. Earthshine.
I'm not sure about Crescent Moon though: that only narrows the brightness gap slightly, right? Or I’ll have to ask if there’s an astronomer on board our flight.