[meteorite-list] Moon rock?

From: ensoramanda <ensoramanda_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 21:33:35 +0100
Message-ID: <463F8D1F.7070902_at_ntlworld.com>

Hi Randy,

Fascinating information...thanks. So can this data can help to narrow
down whereabouts on the moon that the various lunar meteorites may have
oiginated...or at least where they didnt come from?

Regards

Graham Ensor

Randy Korotev wrote:

> Dear Mr. Ensor:
>
> One of the reasons that Oceanus Procellarum was chosen as the 2nd
> Apollo lunar landing site, Apollo 12, was to help answer the red-blue
> question. Astronomers had noted that some of the maria of the eastern
> part of the Moon were bluish and while those on the west were
> reddish. (I use east and west in the terrestrial sense, not the
> astronomical sense - east is right, west is left.)
>
> One of the surprises of Apollo 11 (Mare Tranquillitatis) was that the
> basalts had very high concentrations of titanium-bearing minerals -
> ilmenite (FeO TiO2), ?lvospinel (2FeO TiO2), and armalcolite ([Fe,Mg]O
> 2TiO2), a new mineral that was named after the Apollo 11 astronauts.
> Ever since, the Apollo 11 basalts have been called "high-titanium
> basalts" (as have the basalts of Apollo 17, which were collected on
> the edge of Mare Serenitatis, another blue area, as you note.) The
> Apollo 12 basalts had much lower concentrations of Ti. In mare
> Tranquillitatis, the Ti minerals dominate the color, making the
> basalts blue. At Apollo 12, pyroxene (a Fe,Mg,Ca silicate) dominates
> the color, making the basalts red. The color, thus, is dictated by
> silicates and oxides of metals (mainly Fe and Ti), not be free metal
> from meteorites.
>
> Earth-based spectroscopy of the near side as well as whole-moon
> spectroscopy by the Clementine mission show that high-Ti basalts are
> really not so common on the Moon. None of the basaltic lunar
> meteorites are composed of the high-Ti basalts. They're all "low-Ti
> basalts" or "very-low-Ti (VLT) basalts."
>
> Sincerely,
> Randy Korotev
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At 10:21 05-05-07 Saturday, you wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Not far back there was a discussion on the list about iron contentent
>> in lunar samples/meteorites and I thought this seemed related.
>>
>> I have just been sent this email by a friend from my local astronomy
>> society who is into astrophotography and wondered if any knowledgable
>> people on the list would like to comment. I have never heard of of
>> or seen this before and thought it sounded dubious. If anyone is
>> interested in the photograph I could email it to you.
>>
>> email below...
>> Last night (29-04-07) I managed to image the moon and process it in
>> such a way that it brought out the lunar colours signifying different
>> types of rock on the surface. There are two images attached to this
>> email, one is an unprocessed one (almost "black and white" but it is
>> in fact a colour image!) and the second has had the colour process
>> done on it.
>> The images are a stack of 31 frames taken with a C8-NGT/Moonlite CR-1
>> and a Canon EOS300D/MPCC combination. Each single image was at 100ASA
>> and exp was 1/200th second. To achieve the colour processed the image
>> was neutral colour balanced so that when the saturation was adjusted
>> it didn't favour any one colour. Once done, the saturation was
>> increased in three stages of +30 and then in a couple stages of +10.
>> Once the final colour balance was achieved, the image was unsharp
>> masked and contrast adjusted to achieve the final result.
>> Checking information on the internet, the colours signify areas of
>> differing amounts of metal in the basalts on the Mare regions, the
>> bluer the area the more metal, the oranger the area the less metal.
>> Mare Tranquilitatis is very blue in comparison to neighbouring Mare
>> Serenitatis although round the edge of Serenitatis, the metal
>> composite is higher around the edge of the "shoreline" in comparison
>> to the centre of the "sea." Mare Humorum (to the lower left) displays
>> the opposite colourations to Mare Serenitatis. Sinus Iridum, on the
>> other hand, is very clearly low on metals and has a distinct border
>> with Oceanus Procellarum plateau and from the processed image Mare
>> Frigoris, on the northern edge of the lunar face, is low on metal.
>>
>>
>> Graham Ensor, nr Barwell UK
>>
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>
> ~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
> Randy L. Korotev phone: (314) 935-5637
> Research Associate Professor fax: (314) 935-7361
> Washington University in Saint Louis korotev at wustl.edu
> Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences http://epsc.wustl.edu/
>
> Everything you need to know about lunar meteorites:
> http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/moon_meteorites.htm
>
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Received on Mon 07 May 2007 04:33:35 PM PDT