why is the moon gray? |
why is the moon gray? |
Dec 11 2010, 02:55 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 204 Joined: 29-June 05 Member No.: 421 |
Really this applies to a lot of the solar system worlds, just the moon is the nearest and most visible. Why is it gray? I'm thinking there are two contributing possibilities :
(1) it looks gray because human vision is limited to distinguishing only a narrow range of the spectrum; if we could see a wider range of colors it wouldn't be so gray. (2) it really is gray, even well beyond the range of human vision. This is because it is made up of gray rock, which doesn't have interesting spectral features really at any part of the spectrum. My inner seven-year-old is begging to know "why". A bit of googling seems to indicate that (2) is more of a correct answer than (1) -- at least the only colorful images I can find seem to be forced false-color by some processing to give extreme exaggeration to tiny color differences. Is that right? Can anyone elaborate? |
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Dec 12 2010, 02:44 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 796 Joined: 27-February 08 From: Heart of Europe Member No.: 4057 |
Moon looks grey, but colors can be enhanced.
Look here: http://foto.astronomy.cz/Moon_color.htm It's czech page, but images are international . When you want full size images, click on "Snímek 1024x1024 pix". -------------------- |
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Dec 13 2010, 02:31 PM
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#3
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Forum Contributor Group: Members Posts: 1372 Joined: 8-February 04 From: North East Florida, USA. Member No.: 11 |
Well if you look at a rainforest from the air it looks mostly boring old green.........
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