AST 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Late Heavy Bombardment, Atmosphere Of The Moon, Anorthosite
Document Summary
The moon moon - earth"s nearest neighbor, revolves around it but is tidally locked. Once the frontier of direct human exploration. 12 people have walked on the moon. No atmosphere, no volcanic activity or plate tectonics suffered an early impact barrage 4bil years ago (late heavy bombardment) Place of magnificent desolation, shapes of gray w/out color surface features - divided into two major regions: Highlands - has a lot of craters, composed mainly of anorthosite. Maria - large, smooth, dark areas surrounded by highlands composed mainly of basalt (concealed lava) formed by impacts. Craters - very few appear to be volcanic, raised rim w/ rebound peak range in size from centimeters to more than 120mi. Rilles - lunar canyons carved by ancient lava flows or crustal cracking, some lava tubes. Regolith - a powdery basaltic in maria & powdery anorthosite in highlands covers up rocks (blanket of stone)
