I wrote about a moon lamp project yesterday and now you can have a map of the real thing.
This unified geologic map comes in a 1:5,000,000-scale and can be downloaded in JPG form or you can look at the data in PDF form (note: it’s 712MB).
The chief purpose of the 5M scale map is to summarize the current state of lunar geologic knowledge. Like terrestrial synoptic maps it provides a stratigraphic framework to be used for developing new theory and for determining the regional significance of surface exploration results. In addition to serving as a framework for interpreting surface exploration results, the effort to classify units into type and age by photogeology narrows the range of possible origins for many features.
Shout out to Corey M. Fortezzo (USGS), Paul D. Spudis (LPI), Shannon L. Harrel (SD Mines) and the USGS Astrogeology Science Center for putting this all together.
And in a wider look of space, check out this snapshot of the Milky Way in all its megapixel glory.
Filed under: data viz geology maps the Moon