(ORDO NEWS) — Look at this picture below – it looks beautiful, doesn’t it? No, this is not another work of art, but the fruit of scientific research. And that’s why it’s needed.
This is not just another beautiful image of the moon – this multi-colored image helps scientists understand the geological features of our satellite.
On October 18, 1989, NASA launched the Galileo spacecraft. En route to exploring Jupiter and its many moons, the orbiter made many discoveries during its 3.8 billion-kilometer journey into space before finally reaching the Jupiter system on December 7, 1995.
From shooting the clouds of Venus in the infrared in 1990 to shooting the northern regions of Earth‘s nearest space satellite, the Moon, Galileo left behind an impressive legacy.
Pictures of “Galileo” continue to attract public attention to this day. Among them is a stunning false-color mosaic image posted on NASA’s page that garnered nearly 2.5 million likes in less than 24 hours.
Colored moon
NASA created several false-color mosaic images using a series of 53 photographs taken by Galileo as the Moon approached on December 7, 1992.
The different colors in the images are striking and help researchers understand the Moon’s surface composition and volcanic past, explains NASA.
Volcanism on the Moon occurred 3-4 billion years ago, but the volcanic activity of our satellite was very different from what is observed on Earth.
On the Moon, volcanism is controlled by the height of the surface and the thickness of the crust. Most of the volcanic activity has taken place inside impact craters on the Moon’s surface.
The Galileo imaging system captured bright images using three spectral filters. The false color mosaic highlights various geological features of the Moon, such as meteorite impacts and what remains of its volcanic past.
The bright pink or reddish areas surrounding the orange oval-shaped Sea of Crises at the bottom of the image represent the lunar highlands, according to NASA.
The highlands on the Moon are composed of anorthosite, a calcium-rich white rock that forms when molten lunar material slowly cools.
The blue-orange hues in the images indicate areas where basaltic lava flowed. For example, the dark blue spot to the left of the Sea of Crises describes the Sea of Tranquility.
This is the place where the Apollo 11 landed and where the first traces of a man on the moon are located. The Sea of Tranquility, once thought to be the remnant of an ocean on the Moon, is a smooth plain of basaltic lavas that were formed 3.9 billion years ago by a massive impact.
A crack in the impact crater allowed basalts to seep into the basin, creating dark patches visible from Earth.
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