The Far Side of the Moon [recurso electrónico] : A Photographic Guide / by Charles J. Byrne.

The Far Side of the Moon -- The Spacecraft Missions and Images -- The History of the Moon and its Features -- Regions of the Far Side -- Nomenclature and Conventions of this Book -- The Western Far Side Region: Earth-rise, Tsiolkovskiy, Gagarin, and the Mendeleev Basin -- The Korolev Basin Region -- The South Pole-Aitken Basin and the South Polar Region -- The Northwestern Far Side Region: The Moscoviense Basin -- The Eastern Far Side Region: Birkhoff to Hertzsprung -- The North Polar Far Side Region -- The Orientale Limb Region -- The Near Side Megabasin.

This book is a companion to Byrnes's award-winning Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon (Springer, 2005). It provides comprehensive coverage of the far side of the Moon, and is the first book that collects photographs from all five Lunar Orbiter missions: Clementine, Apollo, Luna, Zond, and Nozomi. As in the previous book, the scanning artifacts of the Lunar Orbiter photos have been cleaned. The photographs show each part of the far side in the most favorable resolution and sun angle. There are many high-altitude oblique photos that provide a feeling of being in space; this book is more like a photographic tour of the far side than an atlas.  The striking differences between the near and far side have been a major mystery for astronomers but this book suggests an explanation: a massive early impact on the near side produced the Near Side Megabasin; an impact so large that its rim is on the far side. The floor of this basin established the canvas for the portrait of the Man in the Moon and its ejecta prepared the far side for the rugged array of basins and craters shown in these photos. Since many professional and amateur astronomers direct their telescopes to the near side of the Moon; these photos provide a unique opportunity to become familiar with the far side!