NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU
This week’s MotD theme: Holy Moley!
On Earth we know of a few craters that exist here and there, some more prominent than others (see yesterday’s MotD); the rest hide under eons of vegetation. Our moon, on the other hand, bares all of her craters…thousands of them, craters within craters within craters. Ouch!
Now you can see my inspiration for this week’s Mandala of the Week. Feel free to use this color scheme for it or, better yet, come up with your own!
From November 2011 article about this image on Nasa.gov:
“Our new topographic view of the moon provides the dataset that lunar scientists have waited for since the Apollo era,” says Mark Robinson, Principal Investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) from Arizona State University in Tempe. “We can now determine slopes of all major geologic terrains on the moon at 100 meter scale. Determine how the crust has deformed, better understand impact crater mechanics, investigate the nature of volcanic features, and better plan future robotic and human missions to the moon.”
About the colors:
Shaded relief images can be created from the GLD100 by illuminating the “surface” (in this case the shape model) from a given Sun direction and elevation above the horizon. To convey an absolute sense of height the resulting grayscale pixels are painted with colors that represent the altitude.
View more images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter via its home page on NASA.gov.
Inspiration for Today
Looking at this moon’s surface in this way we can see her “battle” scars; how she received hit after hit after hit and still manages to exist, her scars giving her more character and distinction. She inspires us to keep going, keep moving forward, to embrace our wounds, to show them bravely.
It reminds me of a great Stephen Sondheim song from the Broadway musical “Follies” sung by the great, incomparable, awesome and amazing Elaine Stritch. She too is an inspiration!
Happy Coloring!
If you would want your mandala or your idea for a mandala to be considered for the “Mandala of the Day”, read about how on the Participate page. It’s easy! Or recommend one you’ve seen via my Contact page.
Mandala of the Day 