Sky & Telescope's Topographic Moon Globe

After the huge success of our Moon Globe, Sky & Telescope partnered with NASA to create a 12-inch topographic Moon globe, color-coded to highlight dramatic variations in lunar elevations. Impact basins and deep craters show up clearly in blue (the South Pole-Aitken Basin is particularly striking), whereas high peaks and rugged terrain are colored white, red, and orange. The new globe has about 850 labeled features. We worked with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) team to create the base maps, which show details as small as 0.5 kilometer across. LOLA determines terrain altitudes by firing pulses of near-infrared light and then measuring the roundtrip travel time of the reflections; the accumulated data yield topographic maps. Developing the base map for the Topographic Moon Globe and ensuring its accuracy has been a team effort. But special commendations go to Illustration Director Gregg Dinderman, Senior Editor Kelly Beatty, Equipment Editor Se