My Astro Photo Of The Day
October 19, 2010 at 4:14 pm
(This post was last modified: October 19, 2010 at 9:09 pm by orogenicman.)
Here is an image I took of the harvest moon, in October, 2006.
As most of you know, the moon is rather drab in appearence, there being not much to see colorwise. But there are, in fact, plenty of subtle color variations on the moon's surface that most images don't show. I used the method of color saturation in layers that enhances those subtle colors and makes them more apparent without affecting the resolution of the image. What's more, the different subtle color changes reflect the actual mineralogy of the moon. For instance, the purplish blue areas you see in the image above are composed of a very unique lunar basalt that is highly enriched in titanium. The reddish areas are lunar basalts that are rich in Iron. The grayish areas surrounding very bright craters are the debris fields from those impacts, and represent very fine powdery material. The pinkish areas of the highlands represent some of the oldest material on the moon, much of which is composed almost entirely of silicates. much like the cores of Earth's continents.
As most of you know, the moon is rather drab in appearence, there being not much to see colorwise. But there are, in fact, plenty of subtle color variations on the moon's surface that most images don't show. I used the method of color saturation in layers that enhances those subtle colors and makes them more apparent without affecting the resolution of the image. What's more, the different subtle color changes reflect the actual mineralogy of the moon. For instance, the purplish blue areas you see in the image above are composed of a very unique lunar basalt that is highly enriched in titanium. The reddish areas are lunar basalts that are rich in Iron. The grayish areas surrounding very bright craters are the debris fields from those impacts, and represent very fine powdery material. The pinkish areas of the highlands represent some of the oldest material on the moon, much of which is composed almost entirely of silicates. much like the cores of Earth's continents.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero