Posted on 01/16/2023 1:00:01 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: Our Moon doesn't really look like this. Earth's Moon, Luna, doesn't naturally show this rich texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality. The featured image is a composite of multiple images and enhanced to bring up real surface features. The enhancements, for example, show more clearly craters that illustrate the tremendous bombardment our Moon has been through during its 4.6-billion-year history. The dark areas, called maria, have fewer craters and were once seas of molten lava. Additionally, the image colors, although based on the moon's real composition, are changed and exaggerated. Here, a blue hue indicates a region that is iron rich, while orange indicates a slight excess of aluminum. Although the Moon has shown the same side to the Earth for billions of years, modern technology is allowing humanity to learn much more about it -- and how it affects the Earth.
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
Very Cool ! Every one of those craters is a sign that something splatted on the moon.
Wow. Just wow 🤩.
Yuge craters!
I hafta wonder what it looks like when one of the larger impacts occurs. Is that plume something that may be visible with the naked eye.
Imagine the moon quakes when one of those big hits came.
Think I read here that the Copernicus? hit was actually seen on earth.
Nice!
From my fallible memory -
An armature astronomer was photographing the moon through a home/backyard size telescope, and when his picture was processed, there was a small but distinct flash in the lower part of it, on the moons surface.
He sent the picture to NASA(?) and they looked more closely at that spot on the Moon with a larger telescope, and found what looked like a new crater. A comparison of older pictures of the site showed no crater there. I think he got naming rights, (fallible memory, again!)
Any large enough impact can be seen. IF you are looking . . .
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