Our Moon In 4K: YouTube Has A New Best High-Res Video

This afternoon the folks at NASA revealed a radical new video touring the moon in 4K resolution. This video was made using images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). It's a very, very large video, and you're gonna want to watch it on the most massively pixel-dense device you've got on-hand.

The video we're talking about rolls with a bunch of information freely available to the whole world. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a whole lot of information and the folks at NASA wanted to share it with you. You, the average citizen – you, the science-loving individual. You, the YouTube watcher.

In the video you'll see a collection of important landmarks on our closest lunar neighbor. These include the North Pole, the Apollo 17 Landing Site, the Aristarchus Plateau, the Tycho Crater, the South Pole's Aitken Basin, the Shackleton Crater, and the Orientale Basin. Below you'll see the video in full 4K.

But wait a second – you don't see the option for 4K resolution? You see the video, but it looks all... pixelated? There are a few things you'll want to be sure of before moving on to something new. First, there's a little cog in the corner of the video embed that can be tapped to view options for resolution. If you've got no option for 4K, you might just be out of luck. Some platforms do not have access – and some internet speeds won't allow 4K video to come in at full-res.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was originally intended as a one-year mission. It's been up there floating around now for NINE YEARS. "Thanks to its many orbits around the Moon, we have been able to expand on lunar science from the Apollo missions while paving the way for future lunar exploration," said a helpful unnamed NASA representative on Tumblr. "And as the mission continues to gather data, it will provide us with many more opportunities to take a tour of our Moon. "