June 25, 2021
Internal or Ex?
Originally published November 6, 2011
image by Philippe Tosi
The Moon is a much simplier world than Earth, Mars or TItan. These three have atmospheres and flowing (past tense for Mars)
liquids that eroded and deposited materials. Two and maybe three have frozen liquids that also gouged, eroded and redeposited
rocks and sediments. And at least Earth has a dynamic interior that moves the upper 100+ km thickness of rocks around the
globe like drunken bumper cars. But the Moon seems to have been altered by no processes other than impact cratering and
volcanism. Even lunar tectonics - faulting and folding - were direct consequences of cratering and volcanism. So look at Philippe's
great image taken from Pic du Medi and identify the features of endogenous or exogenous origin - or to skip the geological jargon -
internal or external origin. I see at least six types of landforms resulting from internal activity and five or more from impact. And,
of course, some rely on the interplay of the two. What do you see?
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
Oct 2011. C.14 telescope with barlow1.8x and Ir 472 nm filter + Skynyx 2.1 M camera; processing by Registax 6 and Photomatix 4 pro with tone mapping mode light
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