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public class GeekEarth : Earth { }
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What colour is The Moon?

Well, if you are apparently ignorant like myself you would say “White” or maybe “Shades of Grey”.  This US Government website has a kind of “Google Moon” app which uses photographs from the 1994 Clementine project – which was a satellite sent to The Moon to capture images of its surface.

http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/PDS/public/explorer/html/moonpick.htm

Choose the 2nd option “Natural color” and then click on an area of The Moon to zoom in.  There’s plenty of Brown there, and you can see quite a lot of Blue too.

I am curious though as to why during Apollo 8 when asked what The Moon looks like the response was "The moon is essentially gray, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish deep sand". Page 361

Which is one of the reasons that Alan Bean's art (Apollo 12 moon walker) has always confused me - why does he paint The Moon Brown? Seems like now I know, but that Apollo 8 statement was odd to say the least.

Print | posted on Saturday, June 27, 2009 11:28 AM | Filed Under [ Misc ]

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# re: What colour is The Moon?

The comment made by Lovell as regards the Moon looking like plaster of paris, is because the model moon he was looking at was indeed plaster of paris

www.apolloreality.bravehost.com
5/27/2010 7:49 PM | Fuzz Aldrin

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