Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote:We are actually looking straight at the profile of the Lady in the Moon. We can see her pink face, her red bangs, and the blue hair over her ear. Her nose is rather straight, but her mouth is a bit shapeless. Maybe she is suffering from a cold sore. Her left eye is surrounded by a lot of darkness - is she using too much eyeshadow, or has she got a black eye? Maybe from a meteor impact?

The Lady's splendid diamond necklace, where the actual diamond is so dazzling that it casts rays of light, is fantastic.

Ann

Nitpicker wrote:Looks to me like the Man in the Moon and the Lady in the Moon should get a room.

(It all looks like ancient Greek pottery to me.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenographia,_sive_Lunae_descriptio wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Map of the Moon by Johannes Hevelius from his Selenographia (1647), the first map to include the libration zones.[/color][/b]

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<<Selenographia, sive Lunae descriptio (Selenography, or A Description of The Moon) is a milestone work by Polish Astronomer Johannes Hevelius (28 January 1611 – 28 January 1687). In his treatise Hevelius reflected on the difference between his own work and that of Galileo Galilei. Hevelius remarked that the quality of Galileo's representations of the Moon in Sidereus nuncius (1610) left something to be desired.

Selenography... was dedicated to king Wladyslaw IV and along with Riccioli/Grimaldi's Almagestum Novum became the standard work on the Moon for over a century. There are four copies that have survived, they are kept in Bibliothèque nationale de France, in the library of Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Stillman Drake Collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Liberary at the University of Toronto, and in the Gunnerus Library at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.>>

Beyond wrote:AKA: Col. 'Bat' Guano Have you become a 'fly-by-night' Slime Mold Finder

Now look, Colonel Bat Guano, if that really is your name ...

Beyond wrote:Dr. Strangelove. Isn't the end of the movie where Slim Pickens (a relative?) rides a nuclear bomb on it's way down, while yelling Yaa-hoo and waving his cowboy hat

Tszabeau wrote:So what does the blue indicate about the chemical makeup? Surely not water, as the name Sea of Tranquility indicates.

Tszabeau wrote:
So what does the blue indicate about the chemical makeup? Surely not water, as the name Sea of Tranquility indicates.

• High-Titanium Lunar Magmas like ilmenite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilmenite wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Ilmenite from Froland, Aust-Agder, Norway[/color][/b]

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<<Titanium was identified for the first time by William Gregor in 1791 in ilmenite from the Manaccan valley in Cornwall, southwest England. Ilmenite is a weakly magnetic titanium-iron oxide mineral which is iron-black or steel-gray. It is a crystalline iron titanium oxide (FeTiO₃). It crystallizes in the trigonal system. In reflected light it may be distinguished from magnetite by more pronounced reflection pleochroism and a brown-pink tinge.

Ilmenite is a common accessory mineral found in metamorphic and igneous rocks. It is found in large concentrations in layered intrusions where it forms as part of a cumulate layer within the silicate stratigraphy of the intrusion. Ilmenite generally occurs within the pyroxenitic portion of such intrusions (the 'pyroxene-in' level). Ilmenite has been found in Moon rocks, and is typically highly enriched in magnesium similar to the kimberlitic association. In 2005 NASA used the Hubble Space Telescope to locate potentially ilmenite-rich locations. This mineral could be essential to an eventual Moon base, as ilmenite would provide a source of iron and titanium for the building of structures and essential oxygen extraction.

Most ilmenite is mined for titanium dioxide production. In 2011, about 47% of the titanium dioxide produced worldwide were based on this material. Finely ground titanium dioxide is a bright white powder widely used as a base pigment in paint, paper and plastics. Australia was the world's largest ilmenite ore producer in 2011, with about 1.3 million tonnes of production, followed by South Africa, Canada, Mozambique, India, China, Vietnam, Ukraine, Norway, Madagascar and United States.>>

http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec00/highTi.html wrote:
Recipe for High-Titanium Lunar Magmas
Written by G. Jeffrey Taylor
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology

<<Lunar volcanic glass deposits contain information about the composition of the Moon's interior and the melting processes that operated in it. Some glasses have unusually high amounts of titanium (expressed as titanium oxide, TiO₂), up to about 16 wt%. All hypotheses for the formation of these high-titanium magmas make use of the presence of a titanium-rich layer. This unusual layer was produced by the crystallization of a huge ocean of magma that surrounded the Moon when it formed. Experiments indicate that this layer would consist mostly of ilmenite (FeTiO₃) and a variety of the mineral pyroxene that is rich in calcium.

In one hypothesis the ilmenite-pyroxene layer sank and mixed with low-titanium rocks inside the Moon. This produced a hybrid rock that later melted to form high-titanium magma. In a second hypothesis, low-titanium magma oozes upwards in the Moon and reacts with the ilmenite-pyroxene layer, producing a magma high in titanium. James Van Orman and Timothy Grove (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) question both ideas. Their skepticism is based on the density and ease of flow of the ilmenite-pyroxene layer and on the rates of dissolution of ilmenite and pyroxene. To quantify their arguments, they performed a series of experiments. In one set, they determined the order of crystallization in the ilmenite-pyroxene layer. In the other series of experiments they measured the rate at which ilmenite and pyroxene dissolve in low-titanium magmas. Their work leads them to propose a third hypothesis that calls on shallow (just below the lunar crust) reaction and mixing of the molten ilmenite-pyroxene layer with underlying solids rich in the mineral olivine. This hybrid material would be able to sink readily, and eventually remelt deep inside the Moon.>>

Ann wrote:
As for the Lady in the Moon, she is not easy to spot in today's (large) APOD. But take a look at the mini-version of the picture at the upper right of today's discussion thread. Isn't the Lady as obvious as anything? Her face fills most of "the lunar face" like this portrait of a lady showing us the other side of her face.

Psnarf wrote:
Aha! So that's the real mission of the Chinese rover: hunt down ideal locations for platinum mines!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Size_of_the_ships wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]The route of the voyages of Zheng He's fleet.[/color][/b]

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<<Zheng He (1371–1433) was a Hui court eunuch, mariner, explorer, diplomat, and fleet admiral during China's early Ming dynasty. Zheng commanded expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. Zheng He was born into a Muslim family. However, his religious beliefs became all-embracing and eclectic in his adulthood. The Changle inscriptions suggest that Zheng He's devotion to Tianfei (the patron goddess of sailors and seafarers) was the dominant faith. Zheng He's appearance as an adult was recorded: he was seven chi tall, had a waist that was five chi in circumference, cheeks and a forehead that were high, a small nose, glaring eyes, teeth that were white and well-shaped as shells, and a voice that was as loud as a bell.

Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions. The Yongle Emperor designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire's tributary system. It has also been inferred that the initial voyages were launched as part of the emperor's attempt to capture his escaped predecessor, making the first voyage the "largest-scale manhunt on water in the history of China".

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of such numerous linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing. Zheng He's first voyage departed July 11, 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen. Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei, Thailand and Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia. He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili. The giraffe he returned from Malindi was considered to be a qilin. Zheng He's fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes of trade between China and the Arabian peninsula employed since at least the Han Dynasty. When his fleet first arrived in Malacca, there was already a sizable Chinese community. The General Survey of the Ocean Shores composed by the translator Ma Huan in 1416 gave very detailed accounts of his observations of people's customs and lives in the ports they visited. He referred to the expatriate Chinese as "Tang" (唐人, Tángrén). [Tang was used by some early NASA manned space flights. In 2013, Buzz Aldrin stated that "Tang sucks".]

Zheng He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court. In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425), stopped the voyages during his short reign. Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son (r. 1426–1435) but, after that, the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets were ended. Zheng himself wrote of his travels: We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…>>

by Nitpicker » Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:50 pm

Looks to me like the Man in the Moon and the Lady in the Moon should get a room.