It may not have been spectacularly clear for the lunar eclipse Sunday, January 20, but you could still get a pretty good show as the moon passed through the Earths shadow.

James Durbano with the Big Sky Astronomical Society says there's one thing you didn't see Sunday night, and that was the Chinese rover than landed on the moon's far side a couple of weeks ago.

"This lander also included a rover, so there's a little vehicle that drove down a ramp and onto the surface of the moon. So, it's checking out the far side of the moon. And yes, it is the far side of the moon, not the "dark side" of the moon. That's a very common mistake people make."

Durbano says the far side of the moon gets just as much sunlight as the side we see, it's just that we never see it from Earth as only one side of the moon ever faces earth.

Durbano says this is the first time humans have soft landed a probe on the far side of the moon.

 

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