Sunlit Moon 1.0

Sunlit Moon displays the true phase of the Moon. The orthographic image is rendered from an equirectangular atlas of the Moon based on data gathered by the NASA Lunar Orbiter missions. The atlas is courtesy of the USGS Astrogeology Research Program. Each rendered image accounts for optical and physical libration. Meaning, it displays only the lunar features that are currently visible from Earth due to the effects of libration.

The green compass represents geographic direction and the gray represents selenographic direction. These are drawn to illustrate the offset of the lunar poles to that of the Earth’s poles due to libration. For examples of lunar libration, visit the Lunar Libration page. Clicking on the image of the Moon in the widget displays a selenographic grid to further illustrate the effects of libration. Also, the age and illuminated fraction is displayed.