If something about this animation strikes you as unfamiliar, don't worry, you're not imagining things; though the Moon does rotate about its axis as it orbits Earth, you've never in your life seen it spin quite like this.
The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, forever hiding one of its faces from those of us kicking it planetside. Owing to a phenomenon known as libration, it's actually possible to spot as much as 59% of the Moon's surface. But the remaining 41% – the so-called "far side," was for many years a complete mystery.
But this video, created from images returned by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, offers us an entirely different view of the Moon – one that brings its enigmatic far-side into clear (and, contrary to its "dark-side" misnomer, clearly illuminated) view:
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Tanzania¹² 
