Astronomy Picture of the Day -- GRAIL Maps the Moon's Gravity

NASA ^ | March 19, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: How did the Moon form? To help find out, NASA launched the twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) satellites in 2011 to orbit and map the Moon's surface gravity in unprecedented detail. Pictured above is a resulting GRAIL gravity map, with regions of slightly lighter gravity shown in blue and regions of slightly stronger gravity shown in red. Analysis of GRAIL data indicates that the moon has an unexpectedly shallow crust than runs about 40 kilometers deep, and an overall composition similar to the Earth. Although other surprising structures have been discovered that will continue to be investigated, the results generally bolster the hypothesis that the Moon formed mostly from Earth material following a tremendous collision in the early years of our Solar System, about 4.5 billion years ago. After completing their mission and running low on fuel, the two GRAIL satellites, Ebb and Flow, were crashed into a lunar mountain at about 6,000 kilometer per hour.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit & Copyright: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MIT, GSFC, SVS ]

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, this is one ugly Moon shot. I put a link right in this graphic leading to the 2400 wide version, for the masochists out there.

Growing Gallery: Comet PanSTARRS at Sunset

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[SunkenCiv]

Regarding an impact origin though...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1234919/replies?c=10

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1234919/replies?c=22

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2144049/posts

[Nowhere Man]

Man, the Moon is really made of cheese! B-D

[TheOldLady]

None of your APOD pictures are loading for me. I see that other people are able to view them, but I can’t. I can’t even get on NASA. Nothing has changed on my computer, so I really can’t figure out why this stupid old problem is plaguing me again two computers later.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Eb:

and Flo:

[TheOldLady]

I tried Bing, and clicked on NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, but it won’t load for me from there either.

This is so frustrating.

I guess, please take me off the list. Dang.

[onyx]

It looks like a marble!
LOL.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Man, the Moon is really made of cheese!

Apperently lots of Red Leicester on the Moon.

[houeto]

All this time we thought it was made of cheese when it was actually a jawbreaker the whole time! Who knew?

[SunkenCiv]

Sorry to hear that, I’ll take you off for the meanwhile.

Here’s the non-numerical version of the URL. As you probably remember, when you were having this problem before, I switched to using the IP number instead of the domain name.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130319.html

Here’s the image URLs:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1303/moon_grail_960.jpg
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1303/moon_grail_2400.jpg

[SunkenCiv]

That harbor-lookin’ thing off the Sea of Tranquility is the Manchego Bay. Sing it, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh...

[TheOldLady]

All the links give the same error message, dang it!

Will keep trying.

[SunkenCiv]

That means the Sun is really an Atomic Fireball.

[NormsRevenge]

I fail to see the gravity of this thread in the grand scheme of things,, but am drawn to it none the less.. talk about proof of dak matter.. btw that color ball thing looks just like a rubber ball laying somewhere in my backyard. not sure how it got here, should I call nasa? :-}