Orbiting Atlas #1!: Sinus Iridum (The Bay of Rainbows) December 15, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chang'e, China, Google Moon, Orbiting Atlas, selenography , 2commentsWelcome to my brand new weekly feature—Orbiting Atlas! Each Monday, I’ll break out my lunar globe and trek to a different selenographic point of interest, giving you a tour of each location’s features, history, and potential :)
The first entry gets the honor for being in the news recently…so without further ado:
Sinus Iridum—The Bay of Rainbows
China announced a few weeks ago that the destination for it’s first lunar rover (and mission of any kind on the surface), Chang’e-3, will be Sinus Iridum. NASA and private enterprise have focused more on the solar-soaked South Pole and helium-3-happy Mare Tranquillitatis, so Sinus Iridum is an interesting choice, and something of a departure.
What about it may have caught China’s eye? Let’s look at the details…
The circular “Bay”—given its name by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli–is ringed by the Montes Jura, with the cape-like Promontorium Laplace jutting out along the northeast. The Bay has a diameter of ~149 miles, and lays at the northwest corner of the large, western plain Mare Imbrium, about 1,225 miles northwest of the Apollo 11 landing site and 620 miles northwest of the Apollo 15 site.
Mare Imbrium’s lava plains are nearly flat, extending into Sinus Iridum (once a crater, with the southeast wall having been eliminated in an Imbrium event). These plains are prime territory for helium-3, and that stretch where there was once the southeastern wall may make for a revealing geological study.
It’s figured there’s a large amount of helium-3 on the Moon, but the distribution is unknown—so by scouting out a different mare, China could dig up valuable information on a region not already targeted for ‘gold rush’. Perhaps we’ll see a private company follow the Chinese lead, and scope it out for themselves…
Sinus Imbrium was a location filmed in 2007 by Japan’s orbiter, Kaguya, and it’s HDTV camera. Check out the amazing video below (and also be sure to explore the Bay in Google Earth 5.0′s spiffy Moon view!):
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Check back next week, and every monday, for more selenographic exploration :)
Moon Now Available in Google Earth! July 26, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, Google Moon, selenography , add a comment
As of the Apollo anniversary, the Moon is now available in Google Earth 5.0! Great news for any apsiring selenographer :)
Google has put some great above-and-beyond features into their lunar globe—not only markers and photos from historical sites, but you can find and view Japan’s Kaguya orbiter HD videos of lunar landmarks from within the program! Really neat to have that integrated into the program, and have the reference of the globe right there as the video plays.
You can click placenames, too, and get a little info about where, say, Mare Moscoviense’s name came from (“Sea of Muscovy”).
Google has a significant stake in moon colonization— they are the sponsors of the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, which has been a huge driving factor in spurring a plethora of commercial efforts to the Moon. With the X PRIZE likely to be won around 2011, we could see a lot more lunar goodies from Google (both in and out of Google Earth) over the next few years…
To view the lunar globe in Google Earth 5.0, go to the “View” menu, and under the “Explore” submenu is a Moon suboption. There’s also Mars (!) and the night sky (constellations). So, put on some Sinatra and fly yourself to the Moon…
Picture of the Week: Sweet Seventeen December 16, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, Google Moon, NASA, rover, selenography , add a comment
That is a NASA file image of astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (now an active supporter of helium-3 mining on the Moon) in Mare Serenitatis alongside he and Eugene Cernan‘s rover during the Apollo 17 mission, in which astronauts spent by far the most amount of time exploring the surface, roving for 21 miles instead of the hundreds of yards previous astronauts had been limited to.
– Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander. Last man to walk on the moon, December 14, 1972.
MoonPop: "WALL-E" (News) July 13, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, Current News, Fusion Power, Google Moon, Helium-3, lunar land use planning, Mare Tranquillitatis, MoonPop , add a comment“Outlet Mall, coming soon!”
-A ‘Buy N Large Corp’. billboard on the Moon, next to the American Flag at Mare Tranquillitatis, in the film “WALL-E“
I had a chance last week to finally catch Pixar’s latest masterwork, “WALL-E”. Much like with “Iron Man” earlier this summer, a movie that a whole heck of a lot of people ended up seeing happened to also be a movie with a look at the Moon; and in WALL-E’s case, a look specifically at the Moon colonization and the potential outcomes of it.
It’s a simple, and brief, moment in the film, but a memorable one: In a fly-by of the Moon, the site of the American flag in the Sea of Tranquility is seen as having a billboard adjacent to it advertising a future outlet mall (which, given the circumstances and setting of the film, the builders apparently never did get around to).
The placement of the sign directly next to the flag site could suggest that the fictional Buy N Large Corporation in the film was intending to plow right over the site for their new mall; or that they simply plopped that sign down there for attention.
The strange thing about all of this is that this isn’t really that far from the truth, as things are developing now. The Sea of Tranquility is rich in Helium-3, a resource extremely rare on Earth but plentiful on the Moon that could be valuable for fusion power. So within 15-20 years, we could very well be seeing mining operations going up right next to the Apollo landing sites.
With the generation of kids seeing WALL-E today being the ones who will have the newscasts of their lives dominated by Moon colonization, it should be interesting to see how this one moment in an extremely visible film gets referenced and remembered, as commerical development of the Sea of Tranquility and the rest of the Moon becomes an imminent reality (and potentially, a major public debate).
Atlas' Back: Mare Tranquillitatis April 19, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, Atlas' Back, Google Moon, Helium-3, Mare Tranquillitatis , add a comment
For the first edition of Atlas’ Back, a semi-regular series of features touring selenographic features of the moon, we have ourselves a look at Mare Tranquillitatis: The Sea of Tranquility.
The name being the latin form of “Sea of Tranquility”, Mare Tranquillitatis is the most famous of the Maria, the basaltic plains originally mistaken for actual seas by early astronomers (hence the name, which is latin for “seas”). The above map has the landing sites for Ranger 5, Apollo 11 (the first manned landing), Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 (the last manned landing up to this point) marked, illustrating the massive historical signifigance of this sea in the sky.
With the amount of attention and activity directed towards Mare Tranquillitatis, there’s plenty of images to go around. A few visual highlights to give you a feel for the mare:
Buzz Aldrin on Mare Tranquillitatis.
A view of the mare from the window of the Apollo 11 lander, right after landing.
An Earthrise photo, taken from Apollo 11 prior to landing (different from the famous “Earthrise” photo, featured recently and significantly in the film “An Inconvenient Truth” and widely regarded as having helped found the environmentalism movement; that was taken from orbit during the earlier Apollo 8 mission).
From a distance; Mare Tranquillitatis is the expansive dark patch in the upper left there, with the Apollo 11 landing site being in the lower left corner, as can be seen clearly via the handy Google Moon (a Google Earth counterpart currently geared around the Apollo landings).
The mare is about 300,000 sq km (roughly the same size as the Phillipines), and as that bit of size research turned up, is apparently also a very good site for Helium-3, with (as that abstract notes) about 50% of the mare being minable. Though, my initial reaction here would be to think of Mare Tranquillitatis as a site for the moon’s first protected historical park, and not, say, strip mining.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of Mare Tranquillitatis; there’s many more tours of this sort to come, both from me here, and from many others elsewhere, as this last photo below (of the mare) illustrates pretty well. Stay tuned for the next edition of Atlas’ Back…
Selenology April 5, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Moon, Selenology , add a commentBefore starting this blog, I wondered about and spent time brooding on what, exactly, ‘geography’ would be called for the Moon. ‘Lunagraphy’? I also thought to myself, “Hey, a ‘Google Moon’ would be really neat, something just like Google Earth!”
Well, after discovering this, I quickly discovered this.
Slap me silly, and call me Selene Dion: somebody else had already thought about both. As it turns out, the geography of the moon is encompassed within the geology of the moon, also called Selenology. Selenology sounds cooler than ‘geology of the moon’, though, so I personally figure that’s the name that’s going to stick.
Some of the major seleneographic features of the moon are the mountains/mountain ranges, called Mons and Montes, respectively; the lava flow plains, maria; and craters. Lots of craters.
We’ll tour many of the notable features of the moon in detail here as time goes along, as selenography is (understandably) an important indicator of where moon development will end up happening. Perhaps, even, we’ll pull out some maps and start squiggling (and dreaming). :)
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