Astrophotographer shows the Moon Dance

The presented video was created by the famous astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy. He used more than two million images taken within an interval of 27 day to do this. As a result, McCarthy got a very spectacular video showing the change of phases of the Moon, as well as the libration effect.

The Moon of our planet rotates around its axis with a period of 27 days. The same time is needed for it to make one orbit around the Earth. Due to this, the Moon is constantly turned to our planet by the same side.

However, do not forget that the Moon’s orbit is not circular, but elliptical. This means that the speed of the satellite in orbit is not constant. It increases at the perigee and decreases at the apogee. At the same time, the speed of rotation of the Moon around the axis is always the same. Thanks to these two circumstances, astronomers have the opportunity to “look” beyond the edges of the Moon’s disk. That’s why we can see 59 percent of the surface of our satellite from the Earth, but not 50 percent.