The moon's north pole imaged in stunning detail for the very 1st time !

Originally posted by Riffrafter
Armap - What do you make of the heavy concentration of craters at the North Pole?

It looks a little strange, but I haven't looked at the Moon from other perspectives to see if there's a bigger concentration of craters or not.

Is that a normal occurrence on other planets too? Does Mars have a concentration of craters at it's North Pole too?

That's hard to say, Mars has ice covering both poles, and the other planet without an atmosphere hiding it from us is Mercury, but I don't remember if it has more or less craters on the poles.

Shouldn't it if asteroids & comets often come from that direction? The moon doesn't have a monopoly on being a target for these things I assume.

I think this may be a result of less geological activity on the poles, so while we see large areas (the maria or "seas") that are supposedly areas that were covered in lava and that have less craters, at the poles we don't see those areas, so we only see the craters.

Edited to add that I think it may be also a trick of the light. As the shadows are bigger at the poles it looks like they have more craters, but a quick look at other areas shows that the poles have more larger craters (probably older) but less smaller (newer) ones.

Originally posted by Riffrafter
reply to post by ArMaP

 

For some reason, this photo with all of those craters clustered there strikes me as being...I don't know....incongruous maybe?

Heh... Everything about the Moon is incongruous. Well, except the fact that it eclipses the Sun nicely and keeps face with Earth's rotation perfectly. That would be damn right, rigged, and congruous.

What's incongruous for a 'natural object' is that every crater only penetrates to a certain depth, like those of a golf ball. There are plenty more oddities. If you learn to see beyond the forced mental constructs you will realize the Moon is indeed artificial. This Pleiadian vessel once played a glorious role, but for the past 6,000 years has been the ball and chain around humanity.

Before the chumps start to jump off, be informed that this is the stuff of cellular memory and higher dimensional awareness. Big tings a gwan!

]

I don't know. My first impression is that it looked fake to me. I could be wrong though.

reply to post by tauristercus


As soon as the picture popped up I noticed the counter-clockwise spiral, it's pretty amazing that you can see the direction of rotation from the impact craters.

reply to post by tauristercus


Very cool pic! Makes you wonder about the mysteries of the moon and the craters. Such as why is it darker in at the center of the "spiral" of craters. The moon holds more secrets than we think!

I love how every thread about the moon, there are immediately experts coming in supporting NASA. You would be smart to find it extremely odd that we don't have any high resolution images, to this day, of the moon in its entirety. But the moon is just black white and grey, right?

I see is a black & white photo of a peperoni pizza. Maybe I'm hungry.

Originally posted by smarterthanyou
You would be smart to find it extremely odd that we don't have any high resolution images, to this day, of the moon in its entirety.

If you think about it, you will see that having full coverage in high resolution is not something easy to do, but we have almost full coverage at 100 metres per pixel since the 1990s.

As an example, if you a photo at 100 metres per pixel but want that area in a higher resolution, like 1 metre per pixel, then you need 100 x 100 = 10,000 high resolution photos. As the photos cannot be taken all at the same time (they are taken by a satellite orbiting, in this case, the Moon), they need to wait for a different orbit to take the photos, but if the orbit overlaps too much the previously photographed area then they will need even more orbits to photograph that area, and that takes time.

But the moon is just black white and grey, right?

Wrong, we have colour photos of the Moon.

Originally posted by jward01
Such as why is it darker in at the center of the "spiral" of craters.

That's because it's the north pole, and in the poles the sun is always low above the horizon, making longer shadows that appear as larger dark areas on the photos taken from above.

wms.lroc.asu.edu...

take a look at the interactive map.

I hope this helps explain the appearance of a ton of craters in the center, and also the seemingly rotational image that draws the eye.
As stated, this is a compilation of 963 pictures. Each picture taken from the same spot as the moon and satellite rotate. I quick edited the picture to give you an idea what I mean (each line indicating the direction of the sun). The sun is coming from multiple different angles, casting shadows, and causing the rotation appearance. This also makes the center seem as if there are more craters, because there are more shadows. As you can see from the cut and splice, it appears to me they used linear strips focusing on the center and creating a pie in a sense. So, instead of what would normally appear as one crater, now looks like many because the eye believes that each shadow means a crater... and since there are "many shadows" - it must mean there are many craters. (at least that is how it explains itself to me) When really, it's just multiple angles while the sun and moon and satellite are all in a different position.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d86ca1ab4f8c.png[/atsimg]

I don't see the spiral as much as i seem to see radiating lines from the center out to around 4,7,9ish,10 oclock positions.is this an effect of the images being pushed togethere to form one image ? If I were into such a conspiracy of the moon being faked ,or being a ship , one would think these looked like seems or joints of some kind.....hehe

Originally posted by CeeRZ
As you can see from the cut and splice, it appears to me they used linear strips focusing on the center and creating a pie in a sense.

That's because the satellite is on a polar orbit (otherwise it could not get photos of the poles), so it takes photos in strips from south to north, passes over the north pole, takes photos from north to south, passes over the south pole, etc.

reply to post by ArMaP


Using that type of imaging , how much of a tollerence is there for missed data ? ergo....strips overlaying onto each other or not lining up correctly.I'm certain it can't be much , I'm just curious. thanks in advance

reply to post by iforget


Looking at those pics, is simply mind boggling.

and what about the size of those craters...damn...what a tough cheese ball...

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by CeeRZ
As you can see from the cut and splice, it appears to me they used linear strips focusing on the center and creating a pie in a sense.

That's because the satellite is on a polar orbit (otherwise it could not get photos of the poles), so it takes photos in strips from south to north, passes over the north pole, takes photos from north to south, passes over the south pole, etc.

Well... that just explains what I was guessing at Thank you.

Well.. super? If you are all that interested in the Moon, perhaps you should download GoogleEarth and take a closer look at the Moon? lol - you'll be surprised to see that there is much more high resolution information on Mars; the The Moon is essentially gray—no color—looks like plaster of Paris, remember ?

I got a question,what the heck is this???







cio.gsfc.nasa.gov...

A crater to the right edge and center.

reply to post by InnerPeace2012


I agree the more we look outward the tinnier and more insignificant we become. We dont really need to find a spacecraft or pyramid in one of the craters to wonder at the magnificence of it all. Though it would be cool

reply to post by kdog1982


I was looking at that too! You beat me to the photo on here. I saw it when I was playing around with the picture, but had to make dinner before I could point it out. Yeah - it seems very structured. Not saying it IS a structure per say... but it's a little odd in it's surroundings.