"Moon Mosaic" || credit + copyright: Noel Carboni || via NASA
Hardly seems real, doesn't it? When I first stumbled across this stunning image, I figured it was some kind of digitally animated simulation. But when I looked into it, I discovered that it was in fact a real photograph of the Moon from the NASA website, or rather, (as they put it) it is a digital mosaic combining fifteen (! ) carefully exposed high resolution images of a gibbous moon (the lunar phase before the full moon). The different shades of color, which are exaggerated in this image, correspond to regions on the Moon's surface with different chemical compositions. Just a breathtaking mass of glittering beauty...