The Moon, In Technicolor (PHOTO)

NASA recently released a colorized photograph of the moon, assembled from 18 images taken through a green filter by the Galileo spacecraft. The solar landscape can be viewed below in unprecedented detail and richness of color.

Photo below. See the full size image from NASA here.

Craving more amazing photographs of space? The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured several thousand never-before-seen galaxies. Pictures here.

Comments

[ReedYoung]

11:55 AM on 12/10/2009

Looks photoshopped to me. http://xkcd.com/331/

[Zenith1959]

11:52 PM on 12/09/2009

It says solar landscape, don't they mean lunar?

[hypnotoad72]

09:59 AM on 12/10/2009

Naah. People have always wanted to visit the sun. It's a really hot destination right now... and the moon is soooooooo 1969...

/ducksforcover

[Palemoon]

10:46 PM on 12/09/2009

Why can't NASA just go down to any local technology store and buy a $99 digital camera with which to take color photos?

It's a sad day in America when NASA cannot even create a camera that can snap color photos.

[headly66]

10:52 PM on 12/09/2009

Huh? NASA has been taking color photos for years, since the day they were created. Remember the moon landings?

[Palemoon]

11:55 PM on 12/09/2009

I was referring to their use of a green filter in order to get what they say is the "color" of the moon. Same thing they did on Mars during those famous rover missions, but had their credibility questioned when their own NASA logo was show to be the wrong color in the photos.

I realize that NASA and the military take B&W photos for a reason. What I don't understand is why they can't simply use a color camera to take photos that are simply designed to be nothing more than "this is the color of the moon", or even mars. Why not just use a color camera to take the postcard pictures with and leave the B&W photos in-house for serious analysis?

[imusintheevening]

11:33 PM on 12/09/2009

Huh? They pioneered the development and use of ccd's

[Palemoon]

10:06 PM on 12/09/2009

"assembled from 18 images taken through a green filter by the Galileo spacecraft. The solar landscape can be viewed below in unprecedented detail and richness of color."

Why do that with such a complicated process? Just go down to Wal-Mart and buy a $99 digital camera that can take color photos from the start.

You know we're behind the times when NASA doesn't even have the technology to make a camera that can snap photos in color.

[wewin]

09:35 PM on 12/09/2009

I find it interesting that the flat "sea bed" looking areas only have about 1/10th as many craters and the mountain or land area has. This would indicate that the flat areas were water (or some other liquid) covered.

Just a observation.

[palindrom]

09:43 PM on 12/09/2009

Good point. The moon was bombarded very heavily soon after it was formed, so the uplands are full of craters. The "maria" were formed after the initial heavy bombardment, apparently by large lava flows, so they're not as pockmarked. Interestingly, there are areas on earth that are old enough to show some cratering -- look north of Quebec City on Google Earth, and you'll see a huge circular lake (flooded by Hydro Quebec) that is actually an ancient impact feature on the Canadian Shield (some of the oldest exposed land on earth).

Man, I sure love science.

[SirenForSanity]

09:54 PM on 12/09/2009

You certainly do. Thanks again for sharing more interesting information.

[wewin]

10:00 PM on 12/09/2009

Good stuff man!

[Twentylaws]

07:28 PM on 12/09/2009

Heck, add Crawler to you toolbar or Google Earth!

[MrHacks]

07:13 PM on 12/09/2009

Does Ted Turner know about this?

[Ares1]

07:09 PM on 12/09/2009

The Moon is far more than what meets the eye, what we see from our front yard.

[02bmw76]

05:19 PM on 12/09/2009

See John Lear's www.thelivingmoon.com for a lot of pics of the moon and other fun stuff!

[SirenForSanity]

10:10 PM on 12/09/2009

Thanks for the link.

[b1986]

04:40 PM on 12/09/2009

This picture is depressing. The moon looks beaten and bruised. I know this is probably more realistic, but I preferred the gray only pictures of it.

[palindrom]

10:08 PM on 12/09/2009

Actually, the moon is remarkably gray and colorless in real life. In some of the pictures taken by astronauts on the moon there'll be some piece of equipment that's (say) red or yellow, and the contrast between the color of the manmade object and the color of the moonscape is really striking.

[bothsides]

04:30 PM on 12/09/2009

what about the structures on the far side ? nasa blacked out many pics that were taken on the far side of the moon. Now why would they black out pic & reports just like when our other government dept. do ? such as the CIA or Pentagon ? cmon my people just wake up please.. all what I said can be found on NASA's own website, just word search on their site for images on far side on moon then BAM ! blacked out section of pictures why?

[jonjon358]

04:55 PM on 12/09/2009

They always have some excuse, typically that the blacking and blurring out is due to the way the individual photos are composited together - which might almost sound plausible, but most of the blur-jobs are extremely sloppy, and you can STILL clearly make out structures.

Add to this that many former NASA employees have come forward admitting that they edited out evidence of these structures before releasing the photos to the public - and Sgt. Karl Wolfe's testimony that an airman at Langley Field in '68 showed him unedited photos "hot off the press" from the first lunar orbiter, in which the structures were clearly visible. And this was before we had even been there.

Add to this that the recent Clementine project took over a million photos of the moon's surface, of which only 100,000 or so have been released - the rest are classified. Why classify photos of the moon?

Oh, plus we just bombed the moon and found water, apparently. Good to know in case we build a base there someday.

It's all pretty weird. You're almost led to the conclusion that either NASA *wants* people to believe that there's a base on the moon and so they've staged a series of sloppy fake "leaks" to that end - or there actually IS.

[LDF]

11:09 PM on 12/09/2009

And that picture of Sasquatch walking on the moon's North Pole . . . why don't they release that too?

[jonjon358]

02:18 PM on 12/09/2009

What they won't show you is the alien base on the back side.

[LDF]

11:10 PM on 12/09/2009

And that picture of Sasquatch walking on the moon's North Pole . . . why don't they release that too?

[orkt]

02:18 PM on 12/09/2009

I have been asking this question for years and this is another good forum for it:

Why can't NASA use any one of these high-powered optical devices to zoom in on the lunar landing module and put to rest any claims that we never went to the moon? If we can get to these incredible distances in space, why can't we do a relatively trivial zoom in to the coordinates on the moon where we supposedly landed?

[Goldie Locks]

02:29 PM on 12/09/2009

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

Check out the Apollo 14 photos, about 1/3 way down.

Hope that helps.

[notb observer]

02:35 PM on 12/09/2009

When someone is so deluded as to believe man did not land on the moon, it really doesn't matter how many pictures you show them. In fact, you could physically take them to the very spot on the moon where the rover or the LEMs are still sitting, and they would find a way to deny it. Besides, we have far bigger denial problems in this country. Something like 30% of the population actually believes that the earth is 6,000 years old and that men walked alongside the dinosaurs.

[davidmnc76]

03:18 PM on 12/09/2009

I believe that it is possible that men and sleestaks walked beside dinosaurs.

[Atticusparis]

12:41 PM on 12/09/2009

If you look really, really hard, you can see a studio set with cameras, a couple astronauts, a flag, etc.
;)

[badaboom]

12:28 PM on 12/09/2009

um.. solar landscape??

[jsarets]

12:40 PM on 12/09/2009

Yes, I tried to point out this piece of idiocy, but it was modded.