Planets and Moons  ID: 3577

Permanent Shadows on the Moon

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.)

For More Information

http://www.nasa.gov/lro


Visualization Credits

Alex Kekesi (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Animator
Ernie Wright (UMBC): Animator
Marte Newcombe (GST): Animator
Andrew Freeberg (NASA/GSFC): Producer
John Keller (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Tim McClanahan (NASA): Scientist
James W. Williams (GST): Project Support
Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Project Support
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.

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3577

Mission:
Clementine

Data Used:
Clementine/HIRES
1994/02/26-1994/05/05
Clementine/UVVIS Camera/750-nm Basemap
Mosaic - 1994/02/26-1994/05/05
KAGUYA/Laser Altimeter (LALT)/DEM
JAXA - 2007/12/30 to 2008/03/31
Formerly known as "SELENE".
Unified Lunar Control Network 2005 also referred to as: ULCN 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.
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This item is part of these series:
The Moon
LRO Pre-launch

Goddard TV Tape:
G2009-030 -- LRO Pre-Launch Resource Tape

Keywords:
SVS >> HDTV
SVS >> Ice
SVS >> Lunar
SVS >> Moon
SVS >> Water
SVS >> Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
SVS >> For Educators
SVS >> Moon >> South Pole
SVS >> Shadowed Regions
SVS >> Shackleton Crater
NASA Science >> Planets and Moons