Gallery: Moon Crater Map Reveals Early Solar System History
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Crater Catalog -------------- *The yellow circles show all the craters more than 12.5 miles across on the moon. Image courtesy of Science/AAAS*
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Massive Impact -------------- *At 580 miles across, the Orientale basin is the largest impact basin on the moon other than craters from moon's original accretion. The basin formed from a projectile that impacted the moon about 3.8 billion years ago, likely during the massive ejection of asteroids from the meteor belt from the repositioning of Jupiter and Saturn. Image: NASA/LRO/LOLA/GSF/MIT/Brown*
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New and Old ----------- *A lunar topographic map shows the western nearside of the moon. The blue, smooth area on the right is known as Oceanus Procellarum, a relatively young and less-cratered area flooded by lunar lavas midway through lunar history. The area to the left is the more-heavily cratered lunar highlands, the oldest region on the moon (red and white are the highest topography). The large crater in the center is the 200-mile-across Lorentz crater. Image: NASA/LRO/LOLA/GSFC/MIT/Brown*
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Ancient and Cratered -------------------- *A close-up of the most densely cratered regions on the moon. Image: NASA/LRO/LOLA/GSFC/MIT/Brown*
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Video: Full Tour ---------------- *If the moon spun, this is what we would see. Image: NASA*
