Google Moon, Just a map of the moon Options

[Phil Stooke]

I thought the google moon thing was pretty shabby.

There is lots of real mapping and imagery they could have used, but they were lazy.

Also in the 'more info' page they say:

"Google Moon only has as much data as NASA was able to give us, so there are limitations (for now) on how close to the surface we can zoom."

But the map is from the USGS, not NASA. They could have done much better than this. I suppose they thought nobody really cared.

Phil

[mike]

I would even say that Google only put up the Moon map so that they could have that 'moon is swiss cheese' joke. Eh. Maybe the interest they get from the little bit they put up will inspire them to replace it with something more interesting yet..

[MiniTES]

I wonder how the whole 'Moon is made of cheese' thing got started.. Why not 'Mars is made of beef' or 'Venus is made of curried rice'? The ocean is made of whiskey, the dirt is made of chocolate.. The clouds are made of wisps of sugar, and the air is made of glass.

There was a serious theory in the 1950s that Venus had oceans of seltzer, because they would be heavily carbonated under pressure.

[MiniTES]

And I was disappointed; I just looked at google Earth for the first time and was impressed. I had seen this thread and thought, "wow, this will be really great for the moon". And then... blah. It isn't THAT funny.

[ljk4-1]

There was a serious theory in the 1950s that Venus had oceans of seltzer, because they would be heavily carbonated under pressure.

Venus was also conjectured to be covered in oil. Bet we would have had plenty of manned missions to Venus by 1980 if that theory had been true. Sponsored by Exxon, Shell, Mobil, and others of course.

[mike]

Hey, wait, I just realized that Venus IS covered in oil (super-mega-ultra-great oil that is worth $1 billion a barrel)! Go crazy, capitalists!

[Bob Shaw]

Hey, wait, I just realized that Venus IS covered in oil (super-mega-ultra-great oil that is worth $1 billion a barrel)!  Go crazy, capitalists!

Boah, did you-all say there's OLL on VENICE? Thay-ut eye-taliban place with them theyur caynals? Ah think they could-all do with suy-am militaruh 'advisuhs', capiche? An' ley-uts heah no moah about none of them theyah manned flights to that doggone place, you heah? We don't want no humanes theyah nohow, theys'll jes be wantin' theyur humane raights, an' thayut jes gits in the way of the oll biziness...!

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Thet ain't "oil bizness", boy. It's "AWL bidness".

[Bob Shaw]

Thet ain't "oil bizness", boy.  It's "AWL bidness".

Bruce:

LOL! Ah stands currrectud!

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

Zoom into the Moon and see all the known landing sites using the National Geographic Lunar Map from 1968:

http://www.ngmapstore.com/shopping/product...?iProductID=111


Trivia Time: This same map was the one on the wall in Lou Grant's office on the Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS-TV, 1970 - 1978).

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/...marytylermo.htm

[DDAVIS]

[quote=ljk4-1,Oct 13 2005, 08:04 PM]
Zoom into the Moon and see all the known landing sites using the National Geographic Lunar Map from 1968:

For its time the National Geographic Lunar chart was a pretty good map. The artist, Tiber Toth, went to the USGS Flagstaff center and learned from the masters (Patricia Bridges and Jay Inge, who also taught me that technique) the art of using a precision airbrush to paint shaded relief. The Feb. 1969 issue containing the map has an article showing how they tried to independently work out the farside feature positions, which were notoriously uncertain back then. They used a large gridded wooden globe with nearside locations indicated and photographed it from viewing geometries similar to that of numarous Lunar Orbiter photographs, reistering the known locations with coorisponding ones in the farside LO omages and extrapolating from those for 'deeper' farside features. I have not checked the wall map with recent data but it would be interesting to make a comparison on its positional accuracy. The Apollo 8 crew discovered that the ACIC farside maps of the time were as much as 10 degrees in error on some farside locations!
I still have an early ACIC map which shows only partial farside data, with rather indefinite regions filled in with Zond photos.

Don

[ljk4-1]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060401.html

Hubble Resolves Expiration Date For Green Cheese Moon

Credit: Ranger Project, NASA

Explanation: Using the new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a marked date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a "sell by" date. "To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow," a spokesperson advised. Happy April Fool's Day from the folks at APOD. The above image (slightly altered) was actually taken in 1965 by the Ranger 9 probe minutes before impact. The popular Moon is made of Green Cheese myth can be traced back almost 500 years. It has been used historically in context to indicate a claim so clearly false that no one -- not even April Fools -- will believe it.

[Dyche Mullins]

I just read this thread from the beginning and it inspired me to dig up the following very important table from Schreiber and Anderson (1970).



Many astronauts reported that moon dust smells like 'spent gunpowder'. They all clearly had some experience with firearms. I wonder if any knew enough about cheese to make a reasonable comparison. Maybe it was really more of a 'smoked' gouda.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060401.html

Hubble Resolves Expiration Date For Green Cheese Moon

Credit: Ranger Project, NASA

Explanation: Using the new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a marked date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a "sell by" date. "To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow," a spokesperson advised. Happy April Fool's Day from the folks at APOD. The above image (slightly altered) was actually taken in 1965 by the Ranger 9 probe minutes before impact. The popular Moon is made of Green Cheese myth can be traced back almost 500 years. It has been used historically in context to indicate a claim so clearly false that no one -- not even April Fools -- will believe it.

Back in early 1970, while thumbing through an issue of "Science", I was thunderstruck to find -- smack in the middle of the other reports, with no warning or indication at all -- a study comparing the physical properties of Apollo 11 and 12 samples to those of various types of cheese, and concluding that their higher density and other different properties could be explained by noting "how much better aged the lunar samples are". I don't even think it was an Apr. 1, 1970 issue!

[edstrick]

Some of this happy lunacy goes back to John Brunner's ?delicious? short story: "A Report on the Nature of the Lunar Surface", where the most unhappy first astronauts to land on the moon find its primordial pristine organics rich surface has been transformed by biologic contamination on a crash-landed unmanned probe..... a technician's LIMBURGER CHEESE sandwich....