ARISTARCHUS PLATEAU

FALSE COLOR

"False-color mosaic of the Aristarchus Plateau made with three bands of the UV-VIS camera on Clementine. A false-color mosaic is created by making ratio images and assigning each to one of the three primary colors: The red channel is controlled by the 750/415-nanometers ratio, the green channel is controlled by the 750/950-nanometer ratio, and the blue channel is controlled by the 415/750-nanometer ratio. The diversity of color in the crater deposits indicates a complex geological structure, composed of many different rock types. In this image, blues are fresh highland materials, deep reds are dark pyroclastic (ash) deposits, yellow are outcrops of fresh basalt (in crater and rille walls), and reddish-purples are mare lava flows. The sinuous rille is Schroter's valley, a large lava channel on the plateau. The mosaic shows the quality of the full-resolution Clementine dataset. This map overlaid on a shaded relief rendition of the Moon to allow better location of the various color units and their association with geological features." Lunar Planetary Institute.

Image mosaic by Lunar Planetary Institute.