Washington, March 19 (IANS): Are you a moon lover? You can now explore the lunar surface with your mouse in the comfort of your home!

NASA has created the biggest photo ever created of the moon - two metres-per-pixel image - that covers an area equal to more than one-quarter of the US.

If you want a complete printout at standard 300 dots per inch, you need a square sheet of paper wider than a professional US football field and almost as long.

This gigantic interactive image of the lunar north pole can help budding astronomers explore the moon like never before.

Constructed from 10,581 pictures, the mosaic provides enough detail to see textures and subtle shading of the lunar terrain.

The entire image measures 931,070 pixels square - nearly 867 billion pixels in total.

Researchers used additional information about the moon's topography from Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as well as gravity information from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.

They used cameras aboard the LRO to create the high-resolution mosaic of our moon’s north polar region.

“This unique image is a tremendous resource for scientists and the public alike,” John Keller, LRO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland was quoted as saying in a Daily Mail report.

According to Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the LRO at Arizona State University, “creation of this giant mosaic took four years and a huge team effort”.