We can't see the far side of the moon from Earth because the two bodies are tidally locked. NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory has captured a series of pictures as the moon passed in front of the sunlit side of Earth and will keep doing so about twice a year:
The images, taken on 16 July, show the moon moving across the Pacific Ocean towards North America. Its far side is shown in detail owing to sunlight hitting it, revealing a crater and a large plain called the Mare Moscoviense.
[...] Associate Professor Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University, said the images of the far side of the moon were "captivating".
"It's unusual because you need a spacecraft that has gone beyond the moon to get a picture of the moon like this," he said. "This was taken around one million miles from Earth. We don't normally get that perspective."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @02:20AM
What's really awesome about these images is seeing both the Earth and moon is the same shot
You know, as a kid, I encountered the moon's albedo (listed as 0.15 in the book I was reading, IIRC, though wikipedia says 0.136), and was flabbergasted -- it couldn't possibly be that dingy, it looks white in the sky most nights! Of course I've intellectually understood the resolution of that apparent contradiction* for many years now, but it's still amazing to see an image that makes it delightfully and viscerally clear by juxtaposing the moon with a familiar in-frame reference.
* It's simple, of course -- the moon, dingy though it be, is the brightest object in the sky, so your eyes adjust their exposure settings to it; if the moon were 5 times as bright, it would appear much the same, and the stars would appear dimmer.