After launching on a Falcon 9 rocket in August 2022, the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter slid into orbit around the Moon last month. This was South Korea's first lunar probe, and among its chief objectives was surveying the polar regions of the Moon for resources such as water ice.

One of the six instruments carried by the half-ton satellite was a hyper-sensitive camera built by NASA called ShadowCam. The camera was designed with maximum sensitivity to light, such that it could provide images of permanently shadowed regions of the poles—which is to say, capture images of things that are inherently very dark.

Earlier this week, the ShadowCam team released its first image, which reveals a wall and the floor of Shackleton Crater near the south pole of the Moon. At first glance, there's nothing remarkable about the photo. It looks a lot like... the Moon.

However, what you're actually looking at is an area of the Moon that lies in total darkness. Here is a photograph taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009, shortly after it reached the Moon. That black area on the left of the photo? That's the region of Shackleton Crater imaged by ShadowCam. Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal. //

According to the imaging team, the camera's ability to capture clear images at high sensitivity is the equivalent of increasing from ISO 100 to greater than 12,800 without increasing grain.