Once in a blue moon might be more common than we thought.
New images show that the moon is way more colorful than just shades of gray. Instead, the orbital rock was observed to show tints of both blue and red.
The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — abbreviated to Juice — snapped hue-filled photos of the lunar surface before it returned to Earth Tuesday.
They were taken from the craft’s Janus camera recently during a historic flyby of both the Earth and Moon before plotting a course towards Venus for 2025 and Jupiter in 2031.
“The image shows some sign of real color differences in the large-scale features on the lunar surface,” the agency announced.
Newly released photos show the mares of the moon — flatlands of surface far from either pole — were found to emit a more blueish color.
A European Space Agency spokesperson told the Telegraph that “darker regions” in the Mare Fecunditatis — next to the Apollo 11 landing site known as the Sea of Tranquility — “are related to terrains which were resurfaced by volcanic activity.”
Spotted by Apollo 15 astronauts almost half a century ago, the volcanic traces — also known as basaltic compositions — piqued the interest of a Janus operator, who saw some reds there as well.
“There are subtly different real hues from lunar basalts [blueish] and lava flows [reddish], and lots of color in some lunar samples,” Andrew Coates, a physics professor and co-investigator of the camera told the outlet.
While the ESA billed the differences as a “darker grey, light grey and even lighter grey,” Coates said that “it does look like there are some apparent real color differences.”
He noted that the basalt areas “are less reflective compared to the other brighter terrains” on the moon.
Those more vivid land masses are known as elevated highlands — a rugged landing site used by Apollo 16.
“Subtle color differences can occur due to slight differences in composition,” he said, adding that the sun’s light and camera calibration might be playing a role in the new images.
“It’s worth saying that the Janus cameras should get better images and with better calibration,” Coates said.
“So we’ll probably have to wait until September to know how real this is — but nevertheless it is interesting to see.”