This photo was taken last night. Shot in RAW @ 9.1Mb, resolution 3888 x 2592 Total Focal Length 1600mm Effective Focal Length 2560mm Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec F Number: f/11.0 ISO Speed: 400 Processed in Canon Digital Photo Professional Edited in PSP 8 Cropped to 2500 x 2592 Resized to 1000 x 1037 Cropped to 1000 x 1000 Sharpened, border and signature added Camera- Canon EOS 400D Lens- 100- 400 L IS Canon 2 x Extender Phoenix DG 2 x Extender (Very Average Quality) I never seemed to be able to obtain good detail from a full moon as a ½ or a ¾ moon until I read the details below. Actually, the Moon appears to wobble a bit (due to its slightly non-circular orbit) so that a few degrees of the far side can be seen from time to time, but the majority of the far side (left) was completely unknown until the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 photographed it in 1959. (Note: there is no "dark side" of the Moon; all parts of the Moon get sunlight half the time (except for a few deep craters near the poles). Some uses of the term "dark side" in the past may have referred to the far side as "dark" in the sense of "unknown" (eg "darkest Africa") but even that meaning is no longer valid today!) The Moon has no atmosphere. But evidence from Clementine suggested that there may be water ice in some deep craters near the Moon's south pole which are permanently shaded. This has now been reinforced by data from Lunar Prospector. There is apparently ice at the north pole as well. A final determination will probably come from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for 2008. The Moon's crust averages 68 km thick and varies from essentially 0 under Mare Crisium to 107 km north of the crater Korolev on the lunar far side. Below the crust is a mantle and probably a small core (roughly 340 km radius and 2% of the Moon's mass). Unlike the Earth, however, the Moon's interior is no longer active. Curiously, the Moon's center of mass is offset from its geometric center by about 2 km in the direction toward the Earth. Also, the crust is thinner on the near side. There are two primary types of terrain on the Moon: the heavily cratered and very old highlands and the relatively smooth and younger maria. The maria (which comprise about 16% of the Moon's surface) are huge impact craters that were later flooded by molten lava. Most of the surface is covered with regolith, a mixture of fine dust and rocky debris produced by meteor impacts. For some unknown reason, the maria are concentrated on the near side. Thanks for looking,Stuart