Fly Me to the Moon and Let Me Play Among the Stars
Posted by David Ozanich — 20 Dec 2010
NASA has released the most detailed pictures of the moon ever taken. The Daily Mail has the story:
The images, which were taken by NASA's Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO), have boosted the resolution of images of the far side of the moon over 100 times.
Digital elevation and terrain maps based on the new data reveal the heavily cratered and bumpy surface of the moon in all its complexity.The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) works by sending a laser pulse through an optical lense that splits it into five beams that are each scattered back after they strike the lunar surface.
From the return pulse, LOLA determines the time of flight which, accounting for the speed of light, reveals the distance from the spacecraft to the lunar surface.
The colors, which have been added, indicate elevation with red areas being the highest and blue the lowest.
Via Gawker.
