China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

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Canuk
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China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Canuk »

Surely this puts paid to all the conspiracy nonsense about NASA faking the moon landings? Can't take it away from the Chinese though, incredibly difficult technological achievement to land successfully on the dark side of the Moon. Well played.

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Cunobelin
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Cunobelin »

"There is no dark side
of the moon really.
Matter of fact
it's all dark."

Roger Waters 1973
Canuk
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Canuk »

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661-Pete
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Re: China Lands on FAR side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by 661-Pete »

Title corrected. I do wish people wouldn't perpetuate the mistake of calling it the "Dark Side". Any part of the Moon can be on the Dark side, depending on what time of the Lunar day it is...
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Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...
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Canuk
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Re: China Lands on FAR side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Canuk »

661-Pete wrote:Title corrected. I do wish people wouldn't perpetuate the mistake of calling it the "Dark Side". Any part of the Moon can be on the Dark side, depending on what time of the Lunar day it is...


Yes, quite a few people pointing that out on the Twitter feed above. The far side is sunlit but dark to us here on earth. Hence the difficulty landing there as its also dark to radio signals from earth and telemetry. Hats off to the Chinese for making a successful landing. I'm sure it was an extraordinary complex feat.
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by mercalia »

they say they have? who knows since we cant directly zoom in on them with big telescopes?
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Dark? Cold? :?
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philvantwo
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by philvantwo »

Sounds a bit like Wales!!
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by kwackers »

Dried clangers now on the list of Chinese remedies?
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by rjb »

mercalia wrote:they say they have? who knows since we cant directly zoom in on them with big telescopes?


That's so we can't see what their up to up there. :twisted:
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Mick F
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Mick F »

They said on R4 news that they'd landed near the south(?) pole.
What they didn't say, was that the south pole is at the top as the magnetic poles are the other way round from Earth.



Could have been that R4 said they landed near the north pole ................ I could have remembered it wrongly ..................... but they are there to entertain and educate, so they should do a bit of educating in that the Moon's poles are opposite to Earth's and they need to say which bit of the Moon they were referring to.
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kwackers
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by kwackers »

Mick F wrote:They said on R4 news that they'd landed near the south(?) pole.
What they didn't say, was that the south pole is at the top as the magnetic poles are the other way round from Earth.



Could have been that R4 said they landed near the north pole ................ I could have remembered it wrongly ..................... but they are there to entertain and educate, so they should do a bit of educating in that the Moon's poles are opposite to Earth's and they need to say which bit of the Moon they were referring to.

Which poles?

Geographic? The north pole is the same as ours.
Magnetic? The moon has a very weak magnetic field that lies mainly in the surface so I'm not sure it actually has a genuine pole.
Rotational? These are called 'positive' and 'negative' to avoid confusion with the others.

Disclaimer: I'm making a few assumptions here based on my understanding of the orientation of solar bodies and the orientation of the invariable plane of the solar system.
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Mick F
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by Mick F »

The north pole on Earth is normally shown on globes and maps at the top. Magnetically and geographically.

From what I remember when I studied these things, is that the Moon (if you orientated it the same way as Earth) the north pole is at the bottom. Magnetically speaking of course.

We tend to have all maps "north up" these modern days, so it's normal to think that a map of the Moon would be "north up" too. This is geographically speaking of course.

Trouble is, with the Moon, the magnetic poles are opposite to Earth's. .................... or that's the way I remember it, so if you refer to the Moon's north pole, do you mean magnetic or geographic or what?
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by kwackers »

Mick F wrote:The north pole on Earth is normally shown on globes and maps at the top. Magnetically and geographically.

The earth magnetic and geographical poles are orientated the same way.

From Wiki:
"The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines the geographic north pole of a planet or any of its satellites in the Solar System as the planetary pole that is in the same celestial hemisphere, relative to the invariable plane of the Solar System, as Earth's North pole"

There's little mention of magnetic poles for astronomical bodies - mainly because for most of them we've no idea whether they've got one or what direction it lies in.
So I 'assume' that means that references to the poles of astronomical object use the geographical sense by default since it's actually defined.
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Re: China Lands on Dark side of the Moon: Fake news?

Post by mercalia »

well they had better watch out for ....


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