Lunar Landscapes Compared

Author: Tom* Comments(4)

These two images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, show the difference between lunar highlands (left) and a ‘mare’ area (right) from close by. Highlands present a very irregular topography and many craters, while the mare area is comparatively flat and shows a much smaller number of craters.

The first image, showing highlands, was obtained by AMIE on 22 January 2006, from a distance of about 1112 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution of 100 metres per pixel. The imaged area is centred at a latitude of 26º South and at a longitude of 157º West.

The second image, showing a mare, was taken on 10 January 2006, from a distance of about 1990 kilometres and with a ground resolution of 180 metres per pixel. The geographical coordinates of the area are 27.4º North latitude and 0.8º East.

Credits: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

4 Comments so far

  1. Steve on May 31st, 2006

    No wonder, the earth facing surfaces of the moon receive less bombardment.

  2. Wayne on May 31st, 2006

    Wait a minute now… The only thing that would stop meteors from hitting the surface facing the earth would be for a short period of time when the earth would be eclipsing the shower. Otherwise, I’d venture to say that the earth-facing side of the moon would receive only slightly (Say 4 to 5 %) less hits than the outer-space facing side.
    I’ll have to do some thinking about that. Anyone else care to venture a solution/guess?

    Wayne

  3. Chloe on May 31st, 2006

    Wait just another moment then…

    Though I will admit, I’m an artist, and I dropped out of astronomy 101 in college, and I have absolutely no credentials when it comes to heavenly objects outside my own imagination… I have watched way too many Apollo mission documentaries way too many times. ;)

    I’m pretty sure that most of those craters on the moon were caused by impacts that took place a long, long, time ago… when there was more… debris? swinging around the solar system (for reasons I’m not qualified to natter on about).
    In other words, these big craters aren’t happening now, round the clock. (Thank goodness, or they’d be headed my way too, I think! Jinkies!)

    I think about the same time of this debris, there were some active volcanos erupting.
    I seem to remember, in this Apollo documentary set I have, one of the missions was to a smooth area, and there was something about it being lava or lava-related rock (or maybe there’s a more proper term for it).

    So the moon was probably struck equally in all areas, with big ol rocks… but maybe the lava flows at that time smoothed out the areas around the volcanos. And maybe by the time the volcanos calmed down, the real big bombardment had also calmed down, because the solar system was clearing up from the debris.

    So in the time since, maybe there hasn’t been enough of a bombardment of impacts to even it out.

    But I probably should’ve taken the time to actually look this up before letting loose like this. But I have a feeling if I searched this on Google, what I would’ve found would probably NOT be the history of craters on the moon… it probably wouldn’t be art either ;) (and I know the difference). ;) heh.

  4. Stephen Uitti on June 1st, 2006

    I’ve written on the leading/trailing bit about the moon on my blog, with some arithmetic:
    http://suitti.livejournal.com/8945.html