The Moon

From earth we see exclusively this side of the moon, as the moon rotates around its own axis in the same time it is moving around the earth. This is of course no coincidence, but an effect of the tidal forces, which are exerted by the earth's gravity on the moon. In our solar system, such "bound rotations" are not uncommon. Large ocean like structures can be seen on the image, the so called Lunar Mare. Mare probably originated from impacts of large meteorites, which led to fractures in the crust of the moon. From these fractures then at a later time, when the great time of the meteorite impacts came gradually to an end, lava emerged and formed these large relatively smooth structures, which show only few craters from more recent times.The fact that the Mare occur preferentially on the earth-facing side, could be due to the fact that the earth with its gravitational force influences the courses of the meteorites accordingly. The colorful images was taken with an RGB camera and combined in an exaggerated false-color scheme to explore the composition of the lunar surface as changes in mineral content produce subtle color differences in reflected light.