Rainbow Moon


What does it mean?

This colorized NASA image shows changes in the composition of the Moon's surface.

Bright pinkish areas are highlands materials, such as those surrounding the oval lava-filled Crisium impact basin toward the bottom of the picture. Blue to orange shades indicate volcanic lava flows. To the left of Crisium, the dark blue Mare Tranquillitatis is richer in titanium than the green and orange maria above it. Thin mineral-rich soils associated with relatively recent impacts are represented by light blue colors; the youngest craters have prominent blue rays extending from them.

Via Mother Nature Network


  1. I’ve had enough of this astro-vandalism. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t put up a white natural satellite anymore without taggers covering the whole thing with paint.

  2. It’s proof of my theory that the universe is actually a giant bowl of Lucky Charms. Repent, for the milk is near!

  3. Reminds me of Apollo 17 where Harrison Schmitt found orange soil in the rim of a crater. Right after that Ron Evans, the command module pilot started seeing orange crater rims all over the place from orbit.

    Nobody had noticed the color before.

  4. “Rainbow Moon”- now I know what to name my first-born boychild. Thanks, Boingboing!

  5. What? No water? Gosh for 20 years all NASA wanted to tell us about was all the water on the Moon. They even spent $78M to make a big, big public splash about all the water (all 200 pounds of it). And now they release a picture with -no- indication of where all the water is?

    On the other hand, it’s important to most of us who plant to mine the Moon to know where the titanium is. As soon as we figure out how to squeeze all that water out of the rocks into bathtubs.

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