Starship Asterisk*

At the West Wall of Aristarchus Crater

Explanation: Aristarchus Plateau is anchored in the vast lava flows of the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum. At the plateau's southeastern edge lies the spectacular Aristarchus Crater, an impact crater 40 kilometers wide and 3 kilometers deep. Scan along this remarkable panorama and you will find yourself gazing directly at the crater's west wall for some 25 kilometers. Features along the terraced wall include dark impact melt and debris deposits, bright excavated material, and boulders over 100 meters wide. At a full resolution of 1.6 meters per pixel, the sharp mosaic was created from images recorded by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's narrow angle camera in November of 2011. The orbiter's vantage point was 70 kilometers east of the crater's center and only 26 kilometers above the lunar surface.

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There is a video pan of the West wall on YouTube.
Credit: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State Univ / LRO

Luna is such a dark and lonely place

Aristarchus, or more correctly Aristarchos (Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος, Arístarchos; 310 BCE – ca. 230 BCE), was a Greek astronomer and mathematician, born on the island of Samos, in Greece. He presented the first known heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe. He was influenced by the Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton, but, in contrast to Philolaus, he identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The heliocentric theory was successfully revived nearly 1800 years later by Copernicus, after which Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton gave the theoretical explanation based on laws of physics, namely Kepler's laws for the motion of planets and Newton's laws on gravitational attraction and dynamics.

This guy had it right 1800 years before Copernicus. If people had believed him, we would have been ahead of the game...If the Church had listened to Galileo, we would have been ahead of the game there too....it is too bad...

This guy deserves more than just a crater named after him....maybe A MOON...not just a crater....maybe a planet....hey, how about we name an EXOPLANET after him in another star system...that would be fitting....

:---[===] *

Pyramid shaped object (rock?) at x:1100px / y:1700px from top-left corner.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1202/Ar ... OC_600.jpg

Has the vertical scale been exaggerated? This can happen with NASA images.

I've always wondered why the moon is mostly (or absolutely) black-and white? Is there a particular reason for that?

sinanipek@yahoo.com wrote:I've always wondered why the moon is mostly (or absolutely) black-and white? Is there a particular reason for that?

No atmosphere or water to bring color there; Only rock and dust!

But such magnificent rock and dust!

owlice wrote:But such magnificent rock and dust!

True!

zijon wrote:Pyramid shaped object (rock?) at x:1100px / y:1700px from top-left corner.

The Egyptians got there first! (And what is all that fuzz? Nobody's cleaned that thing in years!)
Rob

I find the ridges and layers on the wall interesting.
I wonder how they got there. The nice thing about ignorance is it gives me something to ponder.

Boomer12k wrote:This guy had it right 1800 years before Copernicus. If people had believed him, we would have been ahead of the game...

Makes me wonder what knowledge we're suppressing now that will re-emerge in 1800 years.

Boomer12k wrote:This guy deserves more than just a crater named after him....maybe A MOON...

Ancient gods or fictional warrior princesses with their own TV shows qualify - scientists don't seem to make the cut.

sinanipek@yahoo.com wrote:I've always wondered why the moon is mostly (or absolutely) black-and white? Is there a particular reason for that?

The rock on the surface of the Moon is largely basalt- a material that ranges from gray to black (on the Earth as well). The lunar regolith (soil) is just shattered and powdered basalt, which may be further darkened by space weathering.

In the absence of water and oxygen, the sort of chemical reactions that form colorful minerals on Earth are largely absent, so the lithology is much simpler. That's not to say the the Moon doesn't show a range of colors, but they are subtle and unsaturated, and best seen when enhanced by careful image processing.

rstevenson wrote:The Egyptians got there first! (And what is all that fuzz? Nobody's cleaned that thing in years!)

Not the Egyptians, but their gods (obviously ETs). They also made the Face on Mars (notice the pharaonic headdress).

The west wall...

This raises an interesting question, what is east, and what is west? This past summer I delved into solar observing, and was quickly confused by a concept I thought I already knew... because in solar observing conventions, "east" and "west" are reversed from lunar conventions.

After much searching, I found this very good explanation:

http://the-moon.wikispaces.com/IAU+directions

Mark

Chris Peterson wrote:... and best seen when enhanced by careful image processing.

Thanks Chris, added to my backgrounds folder, awesome.

Does anyone know what accounts for the footpath/deer trail looking features that interesect the crater wall?

I could almost swear I was looking at a mesa in my home state of Utah criss-crossed with little trails. We always assumed the quasi- switchback paths were remants of deer crossings or previous human visitors. I can't decide now if the paths in Utah were really geological features unrelated to animal/human contact or if I am misreading the image of the moon here.

The more I know about the moon and other non-earth places, the less I want to live there. Would you?

rstevenson wrote:

zijon wrote:Pyramid shaped object (rock?) at x:1100px / y:1700px from top-left corner.

The Egyptians got there first! (And what is all that fuzz? Nobody's cleaned that thing in years!)

rock.jpg

Rob

Those seems to be 3 small craters.
<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=3wuqg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i39.tinypic.com/3wuqg.png" border="0" a>
http://tinypic.com/r/3wuqg/5
http://i39.tinypic.com/3wuqg.png

This picture is just stunning. I clicked on the picture to bring up the full resolution version (the one with 1.6 meters per pixel) and just spent time scrolling around. Wow.

APOD continues to amaze and thrill, day after day. Thanks.

Boomer12k wrote:This guy had it right 1800 years before Copernicus. If people had believed him, we would have been ahead of the game...If the Church had listened to Galileo, we would have been ahead of the game there too....it is too bad...

This guy deserves more than just a crater named after him....maybe A MOON...not just a crater....maybe a planet....hey, how about we name an EXOPLANET after him in another star system...that would be fitting....

It's certainly remarkable, and a pity his name isn't better known, but wasn't very useful since he was unable to show how his idea better described the universe than the geocentric model.

As far as Galileo, keep in mind he wasn't going up merely against the Church here. If he hadn't managed to piss off several individuals in the Church, in fact, it probably would have been his biggest ally, as quite a few high-ranking clergymen found his arguments, and those of Copernicus before him, quite compelling.

However, Galileo was challenging the entire world, educated and uneducated alike.

In his day, every person knew just from getting up in the morning and looking outside that the sun moved around the earth. It was a daily experience, reinforced from birth, and with the exception of a few well-educated and very open-minded individuals, the most obvious interpretation was assumed to be the right one.

We can get just a teeny, tiny hint of the depth of conviction that Galileo was up against with a modern example: People everywhere were outraged when the IAU recategorized Pluto as a dwarf planet. Even 5 years after the fact, it's easy to get people ranting about those "idiot astronomers" and their meddling. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has talked several times about hate mail he gets as a result of it.

Recategorizing Pluto was a change of a label and some textbooks.

Galileo was telling people their entire worldview was completely upside down.

Les Cowley wrote:Has the vertical scale been exaggerated? This can happen with NASA images.

Usually when NASA exaggerates vertical scale, it's to emphasize particular features for a legitimate reason, and they mention the enlarged scale in the caption. The LRO team press release doesn't mention any stretching in this case:
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives ... ular!.html

I do think, however, there is some unintentional stretching near the edges as a result of trying to project what was basically a side-scanned image as this orbiter generates to the perspective we would see from a stationary position.

Also, oblique shots of other bodies in the solar system are very eye catching because they are very, very rare. Almost all pictures of the moon or any other body are either from far away, or else straight down.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Click to view full size image

Somehow that looks familiar.

-Noel

NoelC wrote: Somehow that looks familiar.

-Noel

I wonder why.