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False-Color Lunar Image Main Content
NASA Center: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Image # : P-41491
Date : 04/1993

Title

False-Color Lunar Image

Full Description

This false-color photograph is a composite of 15 images of the Moon taken through three color filters by the Galileo spacecraft’s solid-state imaging system during the spacecraft’s passage through the Earth-Moon system on December 8, 1992. When this view was obtained, the spacecraft was 425,000 kilometers (262,000 miles) from the Moon and 69,000 kilometers (43,000 miles) from Earth. The false-color processing used to create this lunar image is helpful for interpreting the surface soil composition. Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea. Bluer mare areas contain more titanium than do the orange regions. Mare Tranquillitatis, seen as a deep blue patch on the right, is richer in titanium than mare Serenitatis, a slightly smaller circular area immediately adjacent to the upper left o Mare Tranquillitatis. Blue and orange areas covering much of the left side of the Moon in this view represent many separate lava flows in Oceanus Procellarum. The small purple areas found near the center are pyroclastic deposits formed by explosive volcanic eruptions. The fresh crater Tycho, with a diameter of 85 kilometers (53 miles), is prominent at the bottom of the photograph, where part of the moon disk is missing.

Keywords

Galileo Moon Mare Tranquillitatis Mare Serenitatis Oceanus Procellarum Tycho

Subject Category

Voyager-Galileo, Planetary Astronomy, Earths Moon

Reference Numbers

  • Center: JPL
  • Center Number: P-41491
  • GRIN DataBase Number: GPN-2002-000226

Source Information

  • Creator/Photographer: NASA
  • Original Source: DIGITAL

Image Information ( Copyright Notification )

ResolutionFormatWidth
(Pixels)		Height
(Pixels)		Size
(KBytes)
Thumbnail JPEG 71 93 12
Small JPEG 506 663 443
Medium JPEG 1185 1553 2,533
Large JPEG 2371 3105 14,686

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