Credits

Measurements

Shape

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA), from billions of laser ranges to the surface. LOLA Science Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Smith et al. (2010), Geophysical Research Letters 37, L18204, doi:10.1029/2010GL043751. Neumann (2009), LRO LOLA Gridded Data Record, NASA PDS. Smith et al. (2017), Icarus 283.

Close-up terrain

SLDEM2015: LOLA altimetry combined with stereo from JAXA’s SELENE (Kaguya) Terrain Camera, to 59 m. Elevation: NASA’s LOLA Team and JAXA’s SELENE/Kaguya Team.

Barker et al. (2016), Icarus 273, 346–355, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2015.07.039.

Brightness

The Moon’s reflectance, measured by LOLA’s own laser at 1064 nm.

Lucey et al. (2014), JGR Planets 119, doi:10.1002/2013JE004592. Lemelin et al. (2016), Icarus 273, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2016.02.008.

Craters

1.3 million craters, each measured by hand, too small for the elevation grid to show on its own.

Robbins (2019), JGR Planets 124, 871–892, doi:10.1029/2018JE005592.

Names

9,087 named features from the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature, maintained by the USGS Astrogeology Science Center. Apollo landing positions from the LRO Camera team.

planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov. Robinson et al. (2012), Planetary and Space Science 69, 76–88.

Data from the NASA Planetary Data System Geosciences Node and USGS Astrogeology.

Science

How the surface reflects light

Hapke’s model of reflectance (1981, 1984, 2002; Theory of Reflectance and Emittance Spectroscopy, 2012), with lunar values from Sato et al. (2014) and Warell (2004).

Crater shapes

Pike (1977); McGetchin, Settle & Head (1973).

Earthshine

Glenar et al. (2019), Icarus 321; Earth’s albedo from the NASA Earth Fact Sheet; Russell (1916).

Seeing it as the eye does

Jensen et al. (2001), “A physically-based night sky model”, SIGGRAPH; Ward Larson, Rushmeier & Piatko (1997).

Where the Moon is

Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (1998), after Chapront-Touzé & Chapront’s ELP-2000/82; the Moon’s orientation from the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements (Archinal et al. 2018).

Checked against

JPL Horizons (DE441) for geometry; NASA Scientific Visualization Studio’s Moon Phase and Libration, 2026 for brightness; the ROLO lunar irradiance model (Kieffer & Stone 2005), via GOA-UVa’s rimopy.

Software

Written in Rust and drawn with WebGPU, using wgpu, winit, wasm-bindgen, glam and brotli, among about 400 open-source libraries under MIT, Apache 2.0 and similar licenses.

Made by

Tom Krush, building on the approach of Darklimb.