



Starry Night The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) sends laser pulses down to the surface of the Moon from the orbiting spacecraft. These pulses bounce off of the Moon and return to LRO, providing scientists with measurements of the distance from the spacecraft to the lunar surface. As LRO orbits the Moon, LOLA measures the shape of the lunar surface, which includes information about the Moon's surface elevations and slopes. LOLA's laser pulse is split into 5 separate beams that hit the lunar surface in a cross-shaped pattern. The reflected pulses from these beams provide 5 parallel profiles along the surface directly beneath LRO. This pattern allows scientists to calculate slopes on the surface of the Moon in a variety of directions on scales of approximately 25 meters. This image shows the slopes found near the south pole of the Moon, poleward of 75 degrees South. The bright red to white areas have the highest slopes (25 degrees or more) while the dark blue to purple areas have the lowest slopes (5 degrees or less). The steepest slopes are found in impact crater rims, which appear as brightly colored circular features throughout the image. + more on this LOLA image











Clerke Crater The interior wall of the Clerke crater has many distinct flows of granular material which narrow as they reach towards the floor of the crater. The source material originates from the crater rim. The debris appear higher in reflectance compared to the rest of the crater wall, likely due to differences in maturity and perhaps grain size of the material. The debris flows may be younger than the crater floor and walls if the flow was instigated by seismic shaking or a nearby impact crater. The flow may contain more boulders, which may cause the higher reflectance. The crater is 7 km in diameter located at 21.7°N, 29.8°E near the Taurus Littrow Valley where Apollo 17 landed on 11 December 1972 and is named after Agnes Mary Clerke + more on this LROC image











Diviner North Pole This image features night time temperatures at the Moon's north pole as measured by the Diviner instrument. Areas in blue and purple represent colder temperatures, while areas in orange and red represent warmer temperatures. At any given point in the Moon's orbit, half of the Moon is in daylight, while half of the Moon is in darkness. At the poles, we would see that half of the image would be much hotter than the other. This image was created by using the temperatures as measured at midnight at any given point on the surface. What becomes immediately obvious is the role that elevation plays on surface temperature. Sunward-facing slopes of crater walls appear hotter, while poleward-facing slopes (and in some cases of deep craters) appear much colder.











Linné Topography Linné (2.2 km diameter) is a very young and beautifully preserved impact crater. LROC stereo images provide scientists with the third dimension - information critical for unraveling the physics involved in impact events. The LROC science team presented a first analysis of Linné crater topology at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last week. The LROC team released a set of NAC stereo derived map products. LROC NAC Digital Terrain Models (DTM) are made from geometric stereo pairs (two images of the same area on the ground, taken from different view angles under nearly the same illumination). LROC was not designed as a stereo system, but can obtain stereo pairs through images acquired from two orbits (with at least one off-nadir slew). Off-nadir rolls interfere with the data collection of the other instruments, so LROC slew opportunities are limited to four per day. + explore the full resolution color shaded relief map and plan your own expedition to Linné crater

+ more on this LROC image





