THE MOON

1.25 light-seconds

A familiar sight to us all, the full Moon graces our night sky every 29 days. The lunar landscape is a mixture of bright highlands and dark "seas" once filled with lava, both of which now show the scars of large impact craters and rays of ejected material. Scientists think the Moon itself was formed after a violent collision with the Earth billions of years ago.

Credit: Jean-Luc Dauvergne / Ciel et Espace

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