Tycho's chaotic crater floor

The floor of Tycho crater is covered in many places by a chaotic surface of impact melt forms. Image scale is 0.5 m/pixel, image width is 500m. Incidence angle 84°, LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M117568330R, LRO orbit 2459, January 9, 2010. View the full-size LROC Featured Image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Hiroyuki Sato
LROC News System

The interior floor of Tycho is covered by blocks, boulders and impact melt textures. The impact melt deposits often show networks of fractures visible at the LROC Wide Angle Camera pixel scale of 100 meters.

At Narrow Angle Camera resolution with very illumination incidence angles (illuminated almost along the horizon), the extremely complicated and chaotic nature of the surface is striking.

Simulated view of Tycho's chaotic interior floor from high upon the craters sharp central peaks looking toward the southwestern rim beyond, from a still lifted from the magnificent Kaguya Terrain Camera panorama video, offering an breathtaking tour of Tycho's anatomy, released May 27, 2009 [JAXA/SELENE].

Impact melts have extremely complicated thermal histories. When the impacting meteoroid's kinetic energy is large enough, the initial temperature of an impact melt can be much higher than that of normal magma, which is driven by volcanic activity. The melts are mixed together with ejecta debris, flow down slopes and puddle; loosing heat and increasing in viscosity with time. Once settled in the crater floor, solidification starts at the top and the bottom (chilled margins), and continues little by little to the melt volume interior. Any kind of deformation during this time (for example, the isostatic rebound of the crater floor, uneven thermal contraction, or late flows pushing pre-existing melts) will disturb the solidifying melt surfaces to make the chaotic patterns and sometimes cause local "eruptions" of melt onto the newly solid layer.

LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) 100 meter/pixel mosaic of Tycho impact crater cavity, overlayed by WAC color Digital Terrain Model (DTM) 500 meter/pixel (DLR, Germany). Image center is about 43.32°S, 348.89°E. Blue rectangle and yellow star indicate the locations of the NAC M117568330R frame and the LROC Featured Image, June 15, 2011. See the full-sized context image HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Explore the extremely chaotic melt surface in the full NAC frame!

The topographic color was produced as a by-product of stereo analysis of the WAC global dataset. Producing the global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a big job being led by LROC team members at the German Aerospace Center (DLR; English version) in Berlin.

Yuri Goryachko and friends at Astronominsk are among the premier lunar (and planetary) photographers on Earth. The image above, from a mosaic captured April 6, 2009, offers an enhanced color view of Tycho, the crater who's wide-ranging ray system dominates the Moon's southern hemisphere and beyond as seen with the naked eye. Tycho is not an unusual crater by any standard. It's rays and rough hewn appearance are indicative of its relative youth, only 109 million years old - and not yet "optically darkened" by the relentless bombardment of meteors, micrometerors and hard radiation that gardens and changes the composition of the Moon's immediate surface (and albedo) every 2 million years or so [ASTONOMINSK].

Related posts:
Rubble Pile on Fresh Crater Floor
Mounds in a melt pond
Impact melt features in Tycho crater's floor
More Impact Melt!

A different look at 'Target Rainbow'

HDTV still from Japan's lunar orbiter Kaguya (SELENE-1) shows the full semi-circle of Sinus Iridum, the "Bay of Rainbows," and the contact between basalt melt that flooded the ancient crater and Imbrium basin. Yet another look at one of the high-priority areas of interest targeted by China's Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) as a possible landing site in 2013. China's second lunar orbiter Chang'E-2 arrived in lunar orbit October 6, 2010. Click HERE for full 1920x1080 view [JAXA/NHK/SELENE].

Recent Related Posts:
Sinus Iridum - Next Destination?
Mark Robinson, Saturday, October 16, 2010

Chang'E-2 arrives in lunar orbit
Joel Raupe, Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Moon's geology learned through gameplay

Would young people learn science better
if it were packaged in a videogame?

That's the question at the heart of the Selene project, originally funded by NASA and carried through a four-year grant from the NSF. Selene studies video game learning and the ways researchers can assess how effectively that learning takes place.

The Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit University created Selene as an online game to discover how organizations could best use video games to introduce important science concepts.

Selene challenges players to learn the major geologic processes scientists believe formed the modern Moon. Players create their own moon and then pepper it with impact craters and flood it with lava. It's a great opportunity for students to learn about lunar geology while helping researchers study some key videogame design principles. In addition, playing Selene offers a way to take part in the International Year of Astronomy 2009, a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, highlighted by the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei.

CET's research project CyGaMEs uses Selene to introduce players ages 13-18 the Moon's geology and researchers track players' game-play to study how Selene helps players to pick up on that subject matter. Developers currently have the project aligned to National Science Standards and the Texas State Science Standards. Other states standards are currently being developed.

CET presents numerous opportunities for educators to become involved, including working on game design, development, collaborative research and utilizing the project with students.

The Center for Educational Technologies produced Selene to conduct its research. If you're a student between the ages of 13-18, we'd love to have you play. The game takes about an hour to complete, but you can spend more time after checking out Selene's various resources about the Moon. To play, though, you have to be enrolled by an adult recruiter to ensure parent/guardian consent for your participation.

If you're an adult who'd like to help out, click on the Recruiter button at left and help us find players to take part in the study. Being a recruiter is simple and doesn't involve a lot of paperwork. The whole process involves getting oral consent from a parent or guardian, then forwarding Selene registration access to your recruited players. It's that simple.

Join in this exciting venture and be a part of cutting-edge research sponsored by the National Science Foundation.