[meteorite-list] Moon rock?

[ensoramanda]

Hi all,

Not far back there was a discussion on the list about iron contentent in 
lunar samples/meteorites and I thought this seemed related.

I have just been sent this email by a friend from my local astronomy 
society who is into astrophotography and wondered if any knowledgable 
people on the list would like to comment.  I have never heard of of or 
seen this before and thought it sounded dubious.  If anyone is 
interested in the photograph I could email it to you.

email below...
 
Last night (29-04-07) I managed to image the moon and process it in such 
a way that it brought out the lunar colours signifying different types 
of rock on the surface. There are two images attached to this email, one 
is an unprocessed one (almost "black and white" but it is in fact a 
colour image!) and the second has had the colour process done on it.
 
The images are a stack of 31 frames taken with a C8-NGT/Moonlite 
CR-1 and a Canon EOS300D/MPCC combination. Each single image was at 
100ASA and exp was 1/200th second. To achieve the colour processed the 
image was neutral colour balanced so that when the saturation was 
adjusted it didn't favour any one colour. Once done, the saturation was 
increased in three stages of +30 and then in a couple stages of +10. 
Once the final colour balance was achieved, the image was unsharp masked 
and contrast adjusted to achieve the final result.
 
Checking information on the internet, the colours signify areas of 
differing amounts of metal in the basalts on the Mare regions, the bluer 
the area the more metal, the oranger the area the less metal. Mare 
Tranquilitatis is very blue in comparison to neighbouring Mare 
Serenitatis although round the edge of Serenitatis, the metal composite 
is higher around the edge of the "shoreline" in comparison to the centre 
of the "sea." Mare Humorum (to the lower left) displays the opposite 
colourations to Mare Serenitatis. Sinus Iridum, on the other hand,  is 
very clearly low on metals and has a distinct border with Oceanus 
Procellarum plateau and from the processed image Mare Frigoris, on the 
northern edge of the lunar face, is low on metal.


Graham Ensor, nr Barwell UK