Okay, so I got this weird question stuck in my head: is the dark side of the moon, like, bumpier than the side we see? I know, random, right? But I couldn’t shake it, so I decided to do a little digging. And man, it turned into a whole thing.
My Little Lunar Investigation
First, I hit up the internet, just a general search. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, to be honest. I typed in stuff like “dark side of the moon topography” and “moon surface features.” It pulled up a bunch of articles, some scientific, some kinda…out there.
I spent a good hour just reading through stuff, trying to wrap my head around it. I learned that the “dark side” isn’t actually always dark, it’s just the side that’s always facing away from Earth. Duh, I should have known that!.
Then I stumbled upon some images from NASA – I think they were from some lunar orbiter mission. These pictures were amazing! You could really see the craters and mountains, and the far side, the “dark side,” did look pretty rough.
- Comparing Images: So I started doing a side-by-side comparison. I found pictures of the near side (the side we see) and the far side, and I started looking for differences.
- Counting Craters: This was kinda tedious, but I started, like, literally counting craters in different areas. I picked a few spots on each side and tried to count how many big craters I could see.
- Looking for Mountains: I also tried to get a sense of how mountainous each side was. This was harder to do just by looking at pictures, but I tried to find areas that looked really rugged.
My Not-So-Scientific Conclusion
Okay, so I’m no scientist, and this wasn’t exactly a rigorous experiment. But after spending a few hours looking at pictures and reading articles, my totally amateur conclusion is… yes, the dark side of the moon does seem to be more “lumpy”!
It just looked like there were way more craters and maybe even bigger mountains on the far side. I’m sure there’s a real scientific explanation for it, something about how the moon formed or how it got hit by asteroids, but hey, I’m happy with my little investigation. It was fun!
