Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image taken by China’s Chang’e 3 Moon lander: M101 Spiral.
lmage Credit: NAOC & International Lunar Observatory Association; University of Hawaii Hilo; Canada France Hawaii Telescope.

China’s Chang’e-3 lunar lander remains operational, in evidence by a newly distributed image taken by the spacecraft from the Moon’s surface.

According to the informative Lunar Enterprise Daily, the Chinese lander made the first observation of a galaxy from its landing site: M101 Spiral. [SEE NOTE BELOW]

The lander’s Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT) made the observation on December 2.

China’s Chang’e 3 Moon lander, imaged by Yutu lunar rover.
Credit: NAOC

The Moon-based telescope image is to be “refined further” by the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) in Beijing.

The work has been done in collaboration with the International Lunar Observatory Association – an interglobal enterprise incorporated in Hawaii – and the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lunar Astronomy Team on Hawai`i Island.

China scored its first robotic lunar landing in mid-December 2013. The large lander deployed the Yutu lunar rover.

NOTE: According to Walter Kiefer of the Lunar and Planetary Institute:

“The Chang’e 3 image is not the first galaxy imaged from the Moon. During the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke operated the Far UV Camera/Spectrograph from the lunar surface. One of the astronomical targets that they imaged was the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way Galaxy. According to the Apollo 16 Preliminary Science Report, the imagery of the Large Magellanic Cloud revealed evidence of active star formation regions.”