In January 2019, a monumental event happened — a Chinese probe “Chang’e-4” successfully sat on the side of the moon, made the stunning panoramas and even slightly studied its surface. This mission would not be possible if not for the work of the satellite “Longjiang-2” since the probe had no direct communication with Earth, data transfer is carried out precisely through this satellite. It is noteworthy that in addition to relaying signals, it performs other tasks. For example, does amazing pictures of the moon near the Earth.
One of the best photos have been made recently, 3 Feb. She was transferred to located in the Netherlands, the Dwingeloo radio telescope, which, despite its respectable age, still used by the Chinese space administration CNSA. It is noteworthy that the Chinese management did not publish the photos do the Observatory staff. They have uploaded a photo and edited him so he adopted a more natural look.
In his blog, the experts also published an enlarged version of the image. On it they indicated the names of twelve well-known craters. Tweet of the Dwingeloo telescope was published the original photo without processing in a graphics editor.
It is noteworthy that this is not the first of its kind — even in 2015, NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) captured the time of the passage of the moon in the background of the Earth. “Longjiang-2” seems better and more believable. This is a great result for the apparatus, the width of which does not exceed 50 centimeters. His camera was established in Saudi Arabia.
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