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I came across this great video of Lunar Libration in my internet travels and figured I'd share it. Check it out:
Video of Lunar Libration for 2013
What is Lunar Libration?
Essentially it is the wobble of the moon as it orbits Earth while always showing us the same side. The Moon generally has one hemisphere facing the Earth, due to tidal locking. However, this simple picture is only approximately true: over time, slightly more than half (about 59%) of the Moon's surface is seen from Earth due to libration.
Libration is manifested as a slow rocking back and forth of the Moon as viewed from Earth, permitting an observer to see slightly different halves of the surface at different times.
There are three types of lunar libration:
- Libration in longitude results from the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit around Earth; the Moon's rotation sometimes leads and sometimes lags its orbital position.
- Libration in latitude results from a slight inclination between the Moon's axis of rotation and the normal to the plane of its orbit around Earth. Its origin is analogous to how the seasons arise from Earth's revolution about the Sun.
- Diurnal libration is a small daily oscillation due to the Earth's rotation, which carries an observer first to one side and then to the other side of the straight line joining Earth's and the Moon's centers, allowing the observer to look first around one side of the Moon and then around the other-because the observer is on the surface of the Earth, not at its center.
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