Alex McColgan

It's no wonder then that NASA has a spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is in orbit around the Moon right now, mapping out its entire surface.

I'm Alex McColgan, and you're watching Astrum, and in this episode of the LRO series, we will investigate some of the most unusual terrain found on the Moon's surface, and hopefully I'll be able to make the grey, barren and uninteresting world into something fascinating and wonderful for you.

Let's start with a place rich in incredible contrast.

This oblique angle shot is of Jackson crater, sadly not visible to us on Earth as it is on the far side of the moon.

A bit like Tycho crater on the near side of the moon, when it formed it created a ray system stretching over 1000km.

Ray systems form when particularly fine material is ejected far beyond the crater rim, although their formation is still being studied.

Jackson Crater itself is about 70km in diameter, and due to its size, it is a complex crater, as can be seen by its terraced walls and uplift in the central region.

This crater is actually tilted.

The east side of the crater is 6000m in elevation, and the west side is only 3000m high.

The base of the crater has an elevation of 1000m, and the peak comprises of material that was pushed up from another 1000m down.

Some of the dark patches you see along the walls are shadows due to the sun's angle in the sky, but there are also sections of darker materials compared to the predominantly lighter coloured ground, although it's not as light as this image would have you think.

Your viewing angle and the angle of the Sun play a big role in how contrasts appear on the lunar surface.

Focus here on the central peak in this image.

We'll now switch to a top-down perspective of this same peak, taken at a different time of the lunar day.

Suddenly, the crater basin and the tip of the mountain appear much darker than before.

but a side-by-side comparison does show how the differences in contrast can be seen in both pictures.

And that's not the only optical illusion the Moon can trick you with.

Have a close look at this image.

What does it appear like to you?

Are these regions of inverted bubbles, or are these sections actually rising higher than the wiggly textured material surrounding them?