May 1, 2012

More Clearly Hot

image by " rel="nofollow Maurice Collins, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Last week, LPOD featured a Japanese map of maria ages displayed over the Clementine mosaic.
I suggested that the map would be more interpretable if the background mosaic showed more detail
than the high Sun Clementine image and if the colors were partially transparent so the features on
the maria were somewhat visible. Maurice has delivered two versions. Using LTVT he superposed a
semi-transparent age map on a visualization of the LRO altimetry (seen here), and for the second
map the background was the LRO Quick Map mosaic. This version successfully allows identification
of underlying craters, mare ridges and mountains so that the boundaries of age units can be better
tied to the surface. Maurice made a similar mashup for the farside but the main thing it does is
emphasize how little maria is on that averted hemisphere. Now what would really be cool is if we had
a version of this map - or any map - where a click on any part of the maria would tell you its age.

" rel="nofollow Chuck Wood
Thanks also to Tom Harradine who combined the age map with his own false color image of the
Moon, a third approach.

Related Links
Maurice's " rel="nofollow website

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