SMART-1: the Moon from ESA
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09-D-CIXS_calcium-detection2.jpgWhat the Moon is made of...According to SMART-1140 visiteUna premessa necessaria: il giorno 15.01.2005 una possente eruzione solare (solar flare) ha investito la Luna. Le particelle provenienti dal Sole, abbattendosi sul nostro Satellite, hanno interagito con la sua superficie ed i suoi elementi.
L'output globale di questa interazione è stato registrato da SMART-1 usando lo spettrografo D-CIXS.
"Top Left: GOES X-ray spectrum showing the Solar input. Note the flares around 06:00 UT on 15 January 2005 (GOES Data Courtesy NOAA).
Lower Left: D-CIXS spectrograms showing fluorescence emission from the Moon as a response. The 3 panels show the summed outputs of the 3 separate D-CIXS facets.
Top Right: Area of the Moon overflown during this observation, running from 15° to 45° North, at 60° East long., including Mare Crisium in the southern part of the region.
Bottom Right: The derived X-ray spectrum, indicating lunar elemental composition. Note the prominent Calcium feature, as well as visible Aluminium, Silicon and Iron".
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10-Glusko Crater.jpgGlushko Crater101 visiteThis image, taken by the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows Glushko impact crater on the Moon. AMIE obtained this image from a distance of about 1600 Km, with a resolution of 150 mt per pixel. The field of view of this image is 80 Km.
The crater is located at 8,4° North and 77,6° West and has a diameter of 43 Km. The crater is attached to the western rim of Olbers crater was previously designated 'Olbers A' before being renamed in honour of Valentin Petrovitch Glushko, a Russian rocket scientist, by the IAU. It is very close to the western limb as seen from Earth.
This crater possesses a relatively high albedo and is the focus of a prominent ray system that extends in all directions across the nearby surface. Very clear impact features indicate that it is very young, unusual for this size of crater (compared to the 800-million year old Copernicus crater). It is possible to see a sharp impact wall and rim, unaffected by erosion (by later impacts). In the inner part of the rim, terraces and wrinkles correspond to collapsed material.
Signatures of ejecta include a blanket surrounding the crater, but also fine radial rays. For this size of crater, the ejecta layer does not seem thick enough to swamp nearby features. In the centre of the crater, there is a rough surface, in morphological terms somewhere in between the smooth ‘bowl’ shape seen in smaller craters, and the defined central peaks in craters larger than 60 kilometres.
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11-Rima Hadley.jpgRima Hadley103 visiteCaption ESA originale:"Hadley Rille is the sinuous depression running across this image.
Beneath it are the 1 to 2 Km high Apennine mountains.
The large crater in the center of the image is the 30 Km diameter "Hadley C".
Location: The feature is centred at: 25,0° N and 3,0° E
Naming: In honour of the English scientist John Hadley who built telescopes in the eighteenth century".
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12-CassiniCrater-SMART-1_AMIE_CassiniCrater_H.jpgCassini Crater101 visiteOriginal ESA caption:"This image of Crater Cassini was taken on 19 January 2005 with the highly compact, lightweight and rugged AMIE camera on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft - note: AMIE stands for the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) experiment. Cassini has a diameter of 57 km and is located at 40º North, on the edge of Mare Imbrium".
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13-Billy Crater.jpgBilly Crater (HR)75 visiteCrater Billy, located at 50,1° West and 13,8° South on the Lunar Surface at the southern edge of Oceanus Procellarum, has a diameter of 46 Km and is up to 1,3 Km deep.
Billy is filled with dark mare material and is one of the darkest spots on the Lunar Surface. The crater is deemed to be of age class 5 - indicating an ancient crater [in this case at least 3,2 BY old] and filled, or partially filled with lava.
The image represents a composite made from two raw images (i.e. no flat field or other corrections have been applied) of the region taken one orbit apart.
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14-De Gasparis Crater.jpgDe Gasparis Crater71 visiteDe Gasparis is a small to medium sized crater 30 Km in diamater located on the western flank of Mare Humorum. The rim of the crater is worn and eroded. The interior has, at some point, been flooded by lava and sits around 0,8 Km below the surrounding surface. The crater is intersected by a number of rimae including, running from top-left to lower-right of the crater, a part of the 93 Km long Rimae De Gasparis.
Due to the consistent depth of the rimae it evidently formed after the crater and is possibly associated with the tectonic activity which saw the infilling of the crater.
The crater is named after the Italian Astronomer Annibale de Gasparis (1819-1892, director of the observatory in Naples, Italy and discoverer of 9 asteroids). Along with the crater and rimae, asteroid 4279 is also named in his honour.
The image represents raw data and no flat field or other corrections have been applied.
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15-Bond&Mayer Craters.jpgBond-Mayer Crater94 visiteAn image of craters Bond - after an American Astronomer - (large feature marked by two smaller crater on left of image) and Mayer - after a Czech Astronomer (large isloated crater on lower right) located in Northern Central Region of the Moon, near Mare Frigoris. The image is a composite of 5 AMIE images acquired on 5/6 February 2006, from altitudes ranging between 2685 (bottom of the composite) and 2709 Km (top). Each individual snapshot, taken with the AMIE clear filter, is a square of side about 135 Km. The whole composite covers approximately 270 Km. The outer rim of the original Bond Crater has been eroded and reshaped, and now it basically consists of an outline of hills and mounts.
The interior floor is relatively flat in comparison with the rim region, although there are sections of rough terrain near the northern rim. In the centre of the walled plain is a rille that runs toward East.
To the southeast of this formation is Bond-B, a circular, simple bowl-shaped crater.
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16-Lichtenberg Crater.jpgLichtenberg Crater (HR)72 visiteAn image of the prominent crater Lichtenberg with a diameter of 20 Km. The crater shows a 1300 mt height difference between crater floor and surrounding lava plain. The actual target of this observation was the 'ghost' crater on the lower left of Lichtenberg. It is almost hidden by overflown lava from Oceanus Procellarum in which it is located. This area is of high geological interest and it was selected for the study of the most recent lunar volcanism. It is thought to contain the youngest basalts on the Lunar Surface, with an age of about 1000 MY. Recent data show that lunar volcanism was active for at least 2000 MY from 4000 MY ago, ceasing at about 2000 MY. In Oceanus Procellarum, it is thought that these basalts are the youngest basalts on the lunar surface with an age of less than 1000 MY. This should be compared with the age of the Moon at about 4500 MY. This crater is named after the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) who was professor at the newly formed Goettingen University.
Nota: a nostro parere, questa caption ESA è - sostanzialmente - del tutto incomprensibile ed anche errata. Nel momento in cui si sostiene, infatti, che il vulcanismo lunare è cessato da svariate centinaia di milioni di anni (o anche di più), implicitamente si dice che alcuni grandissimi Astronomi della nostra Storia, da Galileo a Flammarion (i quali hanno assistito a possibili eventi vulcanici lunari classificati come TLP nel famoso NASA Technical Report R-277), erano e sono, in realtà, dei "visionari".
Triste, come sempre; molto triste.
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16-Lunar Alps_H_SEMG9R7X9DE.jpgThe Lunar Alps104 visiteOriginal caption:"The European Alps were formed over millions of years by slow-moving sections of Earth’s crust pushed together, squeezing the land to form a giant arc of upthrust mountains, but the Lunar Alps were formed in an instant. It is thought that the Moon collided with a huge object, such as an asteroid, 3850 million years ago. The collision formed a huge crater, about 1000 Km in diameter. This crater was later filled with basaltic lava, forming the dark circular basin known as Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains). After the explosive collision, fragments, rocks and dust fell back to the surface. While there is considerable debate as to the actual mechanism which formed the concentric rings, it is agreed they are not 'fallback' material. Some scientists argue that the the impact caused the lower layers to act as a liquid and that the rings then 'froze' in place. A flood of lava covered the lower inner one, but the outer one remains as a series of arc-shaped mountain ranges.
In places these mountains rise over 3000 metres. Their inner walls are steep and well defined, but their outer slopes become more broken as elevation decreases away from the impact site. Early European astronomers named them after familiar mountain ranges, such as the Juras, the Apennines and the Alps.
Seen in this image, Vallis Alpes (Alpine Valley) is a spectacular feature that bisects the Montes Alpes range. This valley was discovered in 1727 by Francesco Bianchini. It extends 166 kilometres from Mare Imbrium, trending north-east to the edge of the Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold). The valley is narrow at both ends and widens to about 10 kilometres across.
The valley floor is a flat, lava-flooded surface that has narrow sinous ‘rille’ running down the middle. It is generally considered to be a 'graben', an area between two parallel faults which has dropped below the surrounding area. This is believed to have formed after the formation of the basin, but before the full maria lava flows. The rille corresponds to a ‘lava tube’ formed in a later geological episode by high-speed and low viscosity magma.
"SMART-1 is studying the signature of violent processes that took place during the formation of these giant impact basins, as well as the sequence of late volcanic history over the lunar surface until 3000 million years ago,” said ESA’s SMART-1 Project Scientist Bernard Foing.
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17-smart20050125a.jpgBrianchon and Pascal66 visiteOriginal caption:"This area of the lunar surface shows the area of the Moon around two large craters. The largest visible in this image is called Brianchon (middle left) and is situated at 75° North Lunar Latitude and 86° West Lunar Longitude. The second largest in this image is called Pascal (middle bottom), at 74° North Lunar Latitude and 70° West Lunar Longitude".
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18-imageL,142.jpgMouchez Crater89 visiteOriginal caption:"This image shows an area of the Moon featuring the Mouchez crater near to lunar zero longitude".
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22-ReinerGamma-Maps.jpgReiner Gamma: a Moon "Magnetic Anomaly" (1)122 visiteCaption ESA originale:"The bright albedo feature called Reiner Gamma, is located in the Oceanus Procellarum on the near side of the Moon.
From ground-based observations, this feature was first mis-identified as a crater. Spacecraft orbiting the Moon, however, revealed its true nature: Reiner Gamma is totally flat and consists of much brighter material than the surrounding dark mare. Only three features like this exist on the Moon. Apart from Reiner Gamma on the lunar near side, there are two more on the lunar far side, not visible from the Earth. The last two features are exactly opposite of the large impact sites which created Mare Imbrium and Mare Orientale. It is assumed that these features formed due to the reflection of the shock wave of these impacts on the opposite side of the Moon.
The area also coincides with a strong magnetic anomaly".
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