PIA12954: Marius Hills Pit -- Lava Tube Skylight?


Marius Hills Pit – Lava Tube Skylight?

Caption:

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The Marius Hills pit is a possible skylight in a lava tube in an ancient volcanic region of the Moon called the Marius Hills. This LROC image is the highest resolution image of the pit to date. Image width is 500 meters, pixel width is 0.5 meters, NAC M114328462R.

Background Info:

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera was designed to acquire data for landing site certification and to conduct polar illumination studies and global mapping. Operated by Arizona State University, the LROC facility is part of the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). LROC consists of a pair of narrow-angle cameras (NAC) and a single wide-angle camera (WAC). The mission is expected to return over 70 terabytes of image data.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Moon
System Earth
Target Type Satellite
Mission Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
Instrument Host Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (NAC)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), Wide Angle Camera (WAC)
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Volcano
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2010-03-01
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12954
Identifier PIA12954