Planets and Moons ID: 3808

LOLA Stills for AGU 2010

Visualizations by Ernie Wright Released on December 17, 2010

These high resolution still images illustrate the global elevation map of the Moon being developed by the laser altimeter (LOLA) on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. To date, LOLA has measured the elevation of over two billion points on the surface of the Moon. These measurements make it possible to render shaded relief maps of the Moon with unprecedented accuracy and detail. See also this comparison of LOLA with past maps.

The waning gibbous Moon is rendered from three points of view. For each view, a natural color image is paired with a false color version in which low elevations are blue to green and high elevations are yellow to red. The terrain is in highest relief near the terminator, or shadow line, where the Sun is setting on a month-long lunar day. Amateur astronomers pay particular attention to features near the terminator, since the high relief brings out details that are normally washed out in the glare of reflected sunlight.

A natural color view centered on the Apollo 15 landing site near Hadley Rille. The large dark circular areas are Mare Imbrium (left) and Mare Serenitatis (right). Note the many wrinkle ridges, or dorsa, in the otherwise smooth Serenitatis. The mountain range curving toward the lower left is the Apennines. The one to the north of it is the Caucasus. The bright crater in the lower left is Copernicus.

A false color view of the lunar globe, centered on the Apollo 15 landing site. Colors indicate elevation, where blue and green are low and yellow and red are high.

A natural color view at a high northern latitude. Imbrium and Serenitatis are at the bottom of the frame. The large dark spot near the north pole is the crater Rozhdestvenskiy. Below it along the terminator are Peary and Byrd, craters named for explorers of the Earth's poles.

A natural color view of southern latitudes. Smooth, circular Shackleton crater sits almost directly on the south pole. Irregular, oblong Cabeus, to its upper left, was the site of the LCROSS impact.

A false color view of southern latitudes. The large blue area at the bottom of the frame is the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an enormous and very old impact feature on the far side of the Moon.