Permanent Shadows on the Moon

  • Released Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:54PM
  • ID: 3577
As the Earth and Moon orbit around the Sun, there are places on the Moon that never receive direct sunlight. Most of these permanently shadowed regions are at the lunar poles. This animation approximates the permanently shadowned regions pertaining to the Moon's south pole by maintaining a maximum sun angle to the surface of 1.5 degrees. These permanently shadowed areas are of interest because they could hold water ice. (NOTE: South Pole Digital Elevation Maps [DEM] based on publically released JAXA/Selene data.)

This sample composite combines all the animation elements listed below to visually tell the story of permanent shadows on the Moon. The aquamarine areas highlight the permanently shadowed regions.

Zoom In: This animation begins with the full Moon in view and after one lunar cycle zooms in to the lunar south pole. (NOTE: The last frame of this animation matches the first frames of the "Bird's Eye View" and "Move to Tilted View".)

Bird's Eye View: With the camera looking straight down at the lunar south pole (Shackleton Crater is in the center of the screen) the light cycles one time around to show the full effect of shadows at the south pole. (NOTE: The first frame of this animation matches the last frame of "Zoom in" and the last frame matches the first frame of "Move to Tilted View".)

Matte layer highlighting permanent shadows for "Bird's Eye View" sequence.

Matte layer highlighting permanent shadows for "Bird's Eye View" sequence.

Move to Tilted View: In this part of the animation, the camera changes perspective from a straight down bird's eye view of the lunar south pole to a more angled look of the same area. (NOTE: The first frame of this seqence matches the last frames of "Zoom In" and "Bird's Eye View".)

Tilted View: In this animation, the camera is parked, looking down at Shackleton Crater at an angle while the shadows cycle through a full 360 degree rotation.

Matte layer highlighting permanent shadows for "Tilted View" sequence.

Matte layer highlighting permanent shadows for "Tilted View" sequence.

Print resolution image of the lunar south pole showing Shackleton Crater in the center.

Print resolution image of the lunar south pole showing Shackleton Crater in the center.

Another print resolution image with the camera tilted, showing Shackleton Crater in the center of the image.

Another print resolution image with the camera tilted, showing Shackleton Crater in the center of the image.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/lro

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Digital Elevation Map (DEM) data of the lunar south pole provided by the JAXA/Selene.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • LRO Pre-Launch Resource Tape (ID: 2009030)
    Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 4:00AM
    Produced by - Andy Acuna

Datasets used in this visualization

Clementine (Collected with the HIRES sensor)
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Clementine 750-nm Basemap (Collected with the UVVIS Camera sensor)
Mosaic 1994/02/26-1994/05/05
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KAGUYA DEM (Collected with the Laser Altimeter (LALT) sensor)
JAXA 2007/12/30 to 2008/03/31

Formerly known as "SELENE".

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ULCN 2005 (A.K.A. Unified Lunar Control Network 2005)
Data Compilation USGS 1970 to 2005

The ULCN 2005 (Unified Lunar Control Network 2005) is a lunar control point network that precisely measured 272,931 pieces of data produced by the USGS using existing lunar imagery or data from the Clementine and other observations.

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