You may think that these images are a scene from the latest sci-fi movie, but they are very real scenes, showing in absolutely interesting detail how much the moon wobbles in the sky during each 27-day orbit.
Lunar photographer “Andrew McCarthy” spent hundreds of hours over 22 consecutive nights, capturing thousands of images of the moon as it began to wane and then wane through a nearly complete orbit.
While the “wobble” known as vibration is a phenomenon of filaments, the impressive snapshots show how angular the moon changes as it rotates.
NASA explains that the moon always keeps the same face as us, but not exactly the same face, due to the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month.
When the month is compressed by a number of takes that do not exceed 24 seconds, our changing view of the moon makes it seem unstable, this oscillation is called libration, a word that comes from Libra.
McCarthy, a resident of California, USA, wanted to show for the first time the exact movement of the moon in the sky over the course of a lunar month.
He couldn’t believe his eyes from the horror of surprise as soon as he saw up close how much the angle of the moon changed as it spun in an amazing cosmic dance.
In his 40-second video, made up of thousands of images lined up one on top of the other, the moon is shown making some “vibrations” as it rotates, what McCarthy described as a “cosmic dance.”
This change also allows observers to see many lunar craters from different angles and with different lights.
McCarthy posted the video on his Instagram and wrote: “For the past month, I worked on my biggest project to date – an attempt to show the unmistakable, spherical nature of the Moon.”
He added: “This was done by capturing a high resolution image of the moon every night over a 22 day period. It captured the vibration, which is the apparent wobble of our moon, caught up in an eternal cosmic dance. This small wobble is caused by by the angle of the moon’s elliptical orbit and the position of the observer, and surprisingly, the moon itself doesn’t. It oscillates, in fact, it just spins in orbit. “
