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Magnificent Moon mountain sunrise caught on camera

NASA orbiter snaps the moody peaks of Tycho

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured a magnificent view (big version here) of sunrise over mountains in the centre of the Moon's Tycho crater:

Sunrise over the Tycho crater's central mountains. Pic: NASA

NASA explains: "A very popular target with amateur astronomers, Tycho is located at 43.37°S, 348.68°E, and is about 51 miles (82km) in diameter. The summit of the central peak is 1.24 miles (2km) above the crater floor."

To show Tycho's central mountains in context, the agency has supplied a LRO mosaic of the whole crater, seen under similar lighting conditions as the above snap:

Composite image of the Tycho crater. Pic: NASA

NASA notes that Tycho's features are "steep and sharp" because, at a mere 110 million years old, it hasn't yet suffered the meteorite pummelling which will eventually grind it smooth, as has happened with the considerably more ancient Bhabha crater. ®

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Probably get flamed for this...

But they look much more realistic than the rounded fake ones from the alleged moon landing.

http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Moon-Landing.jpg

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re: ephemeral

I can remember watching the Apollo expedition TV feeds as a young teenager and seeing all the magnificent stuff being discovered -- like the famous orange dirt on Apollo 17 -- and found myself sharing the astronauts' sense of wonder as they all commented on how it seemed that all this awesome stuff had been lying there for millions of years just waiting for us to find it.

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Hah!

Got me to look. Good one.

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