Orbiting the moon in real time and other space videos

[Guest]

This guy Séan Doran composed a video orbiting the moon in real time from footage sent down by SELENE (Kaguya). There's four hours of it. I've got it on a screen in the room right now and it's beautiful and soothing. He has lots of other such stuff too.

 

[StrandedonEarth]

Hey, that is pretty nice. I just happened to skip forward to around the 46 minute mark, and wait what? What are all these track-like formations? (link to time of interest in spoiler)

Spoiler

 

Some sort of cooling cracks?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Like @StrandedonEarth I found myself astounded by some of the things I saw.  There were parts where there were very clearly flow structures; like river valleys... and asked myself 'what am I seeing???'  *50:00 - 53:00

 

There's another take-away... the question is 'how thick is the regolith, exactly'?  There are multiple instances where you can see huge, deep, sharply edged (new) craters... and the sides are all smooth.  No rocky deformations.  Every crater looks like a stone dropped in a box of calc, except in some of the mountainous areas.

 

It's a stunning video: thanks @Brikoleur!

Edit: oh - and you owe it to yourself to watch the Earthrise!

[DialoMalison]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

the question is 'how thick is the regolith, exactly'?

According to www.universetoday.com: "Scientists estimate that the lunar regolith extends down 4-5 meters in some places, and even as deep as 15 meters in the older highland areas."

[benzman]

I think the cracks are rilles, which are collapsed lava tubes.