On the basis of Moon rocks brought back by the astronauts,
explain why the maria are dark-colored but the lunar high-
lands are light-colored.
Answers
Answer:
General Appearance
If you look at the Moon through a telescope, you can see that it is covered by impact craters of all sizes. The most conspicuous of the Moon’s surface features—those that can be seen with the unaided eye and that make up the feature often called “the man in the Moon”—are vast splotches of darker lava flows.
Sunrise on the Central Mountain Peaks of Tycho Crater. This compact mountain range casts a long shadow on the flat floor of Tycho in this image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Figure 1. Sunrise on the Central Mountain Peaks of Tycho Crater, as Imaged by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: Tycho, about 82 kilometers in diameter, is one of the youngest of the very large lunar craters. The central mountain rises 12 kilometers above the crater floor. (credit: modification of work by NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)
Centuries ago, early lunar observers thought that the Moon had continents and oceans and that it was a possible abode of life. They called the dark areas “seas” (maria in Latin, or mare in the singular, pronounced “mah ray”). Their names, Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds), Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), and so on, are still in use today. In contrast, the “land” areas between the seas are not named. Thousands of individual craters have been named, however, mostly for great scientists and philosophers (Figure 1). Among the most prominent craters are those named for Plato, Copernicus, Tycho, and Kepler. Galileo only has a small crater, however, reflecting his low standing among the Vatican scientists who made some of the first lunar maps.
We know today that the resemblance of lunar features to terrestrial ones is superficial. Even when they look somewhat similar, the origins of lunar features such as craters and mountains are very different from their terrestrial counterparts. The Moon’s relative lack of internal activity, together with the absence of air and water, make most of its geological history unlike anything we know on Earth.
Explanation: