Data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have revealed the Moon's "turbulent youth", during which it was pounded by "two distinct populations of asteroids or comets". The agency has put together a "detailed global topographic map" of our satellite, captured by the LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA), showing …

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Friday 17th September 2010 12:29 GMT Loyal Commenter

You don't happen to have a link

to a high-res version of that, do you?

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Friday 17th September 2010 12:31 GMT Anonymous John

Saturday is the first annual International Observe the Moon Night.

http://observethemoonnight.org/

I've just received an email saying that the Moon will be closer to Earth than it has been for 60,000 years, so it will look bigger than Mars.

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1. Friday 17th September 2010 12:58 GMT Loyal Commenter
  
  Bigger than mars, you say?
  
  I reckon the Moon would have to be quite a lot further from the Earth than it ever has been for it to look smaller than Mars.
  
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  1. Friday 17th September 2010 14:33 GMT Anonymous John
    
    I knew I should have used the "Joke Alert" icon.
    
    It was a parody of this.
    
    http://www.snopes.com/science/astronomy/brightmars.asp
    
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    1. Friday 17th September 2010 23:55 GMT Loyal Commenter
      
      Right you are
      
      Apologies for not knowing that; I never received one of those emails, my spam all seems to have been for a 'free palm reading' recently...
      
      Since it's Friday, have one of these on me...
      
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Saturday 18th September 2010 00:11 GMT Daedalus

Boom! (wait a few centuries) Boom!

Whenever you see anything about the early Earth and Moon on the telly, they usually show some animation of fireballs coming down every couple of seconds. In fact the figures for major hits were more like one a century. It's just that there were a lot of centuries in the bombardment period.

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