Southeastern Imbrium Crater Age Dating and Ejecting Data

Scientific Research

March 30, 2011

Objectives Covered

What we covered for Phase II           Moon rocks from Houston, TX on loan Moon Zoo training GIS Imagery hits Red Bank High School How we set up our GIS Format Map analysis/craters Technical issue overcome in gaining imagery Cross section in Archimedes Trask method for Imbrium (Archimedes Crater) and Sea of Serenity Data Collection Conclusions

Moon rocks take out Red Bank High School -NASA mania hits

Lunar Sample from Apollo 16 Mission

Moon Rocks • Launch Pad: Florida, USA (Kennedy Space Center) • Launch Date: April 16, 1972 • Lunar Landing: April 21, 1972 • Mission Duration: 11 d 01 h 51 mins.

• The astronauts brought back 94.7 kg of lunar samples from the moon.

We used MoonZoo to help train our eyes to learn to identify craters. We mapped over 1251 images in 8 days.

How We Got the Imagery

To start: Imagery- how to capture the image, where to capture the image, and how to use the image.

We downloaded imagery from “LROC” and LO orbiters- this took a while and a lot of false starts. We finally found on the internet.

We used NASA Article technical paper from NASA to aid in our choice of imagery and how to proceed.

The Image!!!

Imbrium, you never looked so beautiful!

How We Stored Our Imagery Data

We used 24 memory flash drives to divide up the swathes.

19 swathes covering 9,630.4754304 square kilometers in the Southeastern Imbrium Basin

Ta!Da!- Mare Imbrium- Archimedes crater

12 11 1 5 2 3 4 6 8 9 13 10 14 15 16 17 18 19 7

Area Covered

Distance covered in 1 swathe is about 120 mile or 72 Km 120 miles

Randy Hale- GIS Guru that helped!

Geospatial Analyst at North River Geographic Systems Inc.

Vice President at Georgia URISA Member of the Board at TNGIC 1 st Vice President at ASPRS Owner at North River Geographic Systems, Inc

How we set up our GIS format

• Includes the name of our swathe, which is our work base • Also includes different names of objects found on the swathe • Includes names of objects found, distinguished in colors.

• Names are selected to identify objects of focus.

GIS Format – Part 2

• Used to identify craters detailed features • Used to shape certain objects in the way they are formed

Describes the object and its features

How To Edit a Compound Crater

This is Crater Analysis!

This is a compound crater. The rim walls are connected.

Compound Simple

With all of this information we created these!!! Left Right Swathe #4 With craters marked Combination to make corrected shift with GIS imagery Swathe #7 with only craters marked Swathe #6 with imagery behind it

How We Worked!!

Mrs. Keith is a real task master!

WORK! WORK! WORK!

Over 3 weeks 23 students (Scientific Research) & 1 teacher put in 30 hours we mapped over 55,000 craters At times it seemed like all we did at Red Bank was map craters on the moon.

GIS Hits Red Bank

But mayhem soon followed: 1. GIS crashed twice, and had to reload (which took 8 hours each).

2. We thought we had lost $30,000 of GIS Software-the search was on!

3. Power went out 4. Data crashed laptop 5. Data when printed took up over 1,100 sheets of paper, we stopped at 460.

6. Twitter knows about us! In England and Canada.

7. Data corruption on ‘stick’ 24 8. Can we take a picture and not have the Camera stolen!

9. 4 months of begging to get free software from Virginia GIS.

Technical Issues We Faced With Imagery

1.

Figure 1

1.) Lining up pictures with dots to make swaths 2.) Issues when we were downloading data from LROC was compression data to make swathes and from them not to pixilate or become fuzzy 3.) Last 2 swathes from Sea of Serenity had Long and Lat problems

Original Image

Download Flipping

When we downloaded the crater imagery in order to use the images we had to first turn pictures

90°

Clockwise

Image after 1 st rotation Final Image

Then we had to turn an additional

180° 90°

Clockwise again until the original image had been rotated a total of Clockwise from its original position

Projection Issues matter:

   We put swathes in the southern part of the Imbrium basin to make the projection more rectangular. Better data in the long run!

Still swathes were smaller at the top and wider at the bottom more due to curvature of the moon even with cylindrical projections to lessen long/lat issues.

Sinusoidal Projections allow us to have true and accurate diameters of craters.

Imbrium

Ileminite Rock

(Fe² TiO³) - Formula Has a melting point of 1800ºC or 3272ºF The name for the place of the discovery is Ilem mountains in Russia Metallic to sub metallic metal generally iron black meaning that the lava that formed the south eastern portion of Imbrium had to be around 1800ºC or greater during eruption.

Cross sectional Data for Archimedes Crater

1 3 4 5 6 7 2

Cross Sections

Overall Data Table Read Out Trask 1 – Imbrium Type of Crater Compound Bright Compound Dark Compound Compound Heavy Eroded Compound Light Eroded Simple Total Number 865 102 21 28 565 Simple Bright Dark Simple Simple Heavy Eroded 11468 **highest concentration** 4180 2165 1520 Simple Light Eroded Total of all the craters Combined 20073 **highest concentration** 40987 Square Meters 109,935,726.105555

17,070,670.00716

25,131,823.880641

17,733,033.61608

32,980,290.983086

456,327,831.5276

260,828,060.8237

89,358,083.170547

79,469,488.0927

964,838,198.3933

2,053,673,206.600369

So, what is trask?......

What is the Trask Method?

 The Trask Method is a way of determining the ages of craters based on these assumptions:  Newly formed craters appear sharp with raised rims and rayed ejecta.

 Craters are subdued and destroyed eventually by meteorite impacts.

 Small craters are eroded faster and disappear in less time than large craters.

62 Trask Method Pages Done by hand!!! Only 1038 to go…..UGH!

A Trasking We Will Go!!! (Counting Crater Diameters) We added, Counted, Divided, Rechecked Then 62 Pages in we Found The Microsoft Excel Program

Trask Method 1 Data-Via Excel

( Interior Imbrium/ Archimedes / Archimedes)

Diameter (ft)

0-32.8

32.8-164 164-328 328-1640.4

1640.4-3280.8

3280.8-16,404.2

16,404.2-32,808.4

Diameter (m)

0-10 10-50 50-100 100-500 500-1000 1000-5000 5000-10,000

Amount

20 7,316 14,572 17,435 1277 361 6

Percentages

.049

17.85

35.55

42.53

3.11

.88

.014

The Relative date of our swathes was: we found craters in the Copernican time interval of 1 and 3. the majority of our impact craters (32,007) were between 50 and 500 meters in diameter at 78.1%. 17.9% of our craters fell between 10 to 50 meters.

Diameter of Craters

Summary of GIS Trask 1 Data – Imbrium Crater Object ID in meters Frequency SUM Diameter MEAN Diameter MIN Diameter MAX Diameter RANGE Diameter COUNT Diameter 10-50m 7282 267931.7848

36.791236

10.115496

49.998206

39.88271

7282 50-100m 14556 1062589.975

73.000135

50.004989

99.995138

49.0149

14556 100-500m 17435 3423917.212

196.38183

100.01442

499.95944

399.94502

17435 500-1000m 1277 848423.892

664.389

500.246

997.025

496.779

1277 1000-5000m 361 579381.532

1654.796

1000.258

4835.843

3835.584

361 5000-10000m 6 37005.17863

6167.529771

5192.508224

8873.401565

3680.893341

6

Trask 1 Data

Trask 2 Data

New Trask Images

Two Swathes Red - Imbrium

Two Blue Swathes - Serenity

Two Red Swathes – Inbrium Trask 2

Object ID in Meters Frequen cy SUM Diameter MEAN Diameter MIN Diameter MAX Diameter RANGE Diameter COUNT Diameter 10-50m 293 10833.039

36.972

6.305

49.925

43.619

293 50-100m 1003 75321.4

75.096

9.608

100-500m 1717 331161.074

192.87

100.34

99.955

499.4

90.346

399.06

500-1000m 94 62756.743

667.625

503.306

997.025

493.71

1000-5000m 38 74044.464

1948.539

1003.458

4835.843

3832.385

1003 1717 94 38 5000-10000m 1 5698.2002

5698.2002 5698.2002

5698.2002

0 1

Two Blue Swathes – Serenity Trask 2

Object ID in meters Frequency SUM Diameter MEAN Diameter MIN Diameter MAX Diameter RANGE Diameter COUNT Diameter 10-50 m 50-100 m 100-500 m 4616 6107 3867 160715.7

435917.6

670878.7

34.82

71.38

173.49

10.06

50 100 49.999

49.995

499.76

39.94

49.992

399.76

4616 6107 3867 500-1000 m 191 1000-5000 m 72 5000-10000 m 2 129632.3

678.7

0 0 500.31

0 996.06

0 445.75

110372.6

1532.95

1003.26

3569.09

2565.82

0 191 72 2

New Swathe’s Location

What Did We Learn?

             The age of the Archimedes crater inside the south eastern Imbrium 1.8-2.75 Copernican The age of the western Serenity crater 2.5-4.3 Copernican 55,000 craters mapped The different types of craters: Bright Whites, Dark Haloed, Compound, Simple.

Area mapped totals: Imbrium 9,630.46 sq Km (5,778.4 sq. miles) Serenity 2,156.5 sq Km (1,293.9 sq miles) All areas mapped total: 11,786.9 sq Km (7,o72.11 sq miles) The type of rocks in the Archimedes crater is ILeminite The melt temperature of rocks on the moon in Archimedes 1800ºC or 3272ºF How to use GIS to map the moon Most craters in both areas fell between 50-500m-wih 78.1% in Imbrium and 67.1% in serenity Cross Sections: 1,500 ft rim walls in the southern portion of Imbrium Comparing like areas for best data: Old Area: 2012.4 km New Area:2156.5 km

Where do we go from here?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Develop a DM Model of swathes that went through the rim wall of Archimedes to see elevation and slump patterns Get Data for 3-D Modeling, 50% overlap needed Get swathes outside the Imbrium. The whole perimeter! We had to stop at 2! For times sake Look at statistical data for more trends to answer questions of why so few craters in 500-1000m? 1000m-5000m?

the 0-10 – we think our resolution or picture would not let us see and the 5000-10000m are really rare.

Bibliography

             http://www.lpi.usra.edu

http://www.the-moon.wikispaces.com

http://www.apollo.sese.edu

http://www.tappedin.org

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/archog/060315/srille.html

l http://www.homepage.ntlworld.com/peterlloyd3/moon/craters/membrium050423.htm

http://www.nasa.gov

http://www.moontoday.net

http://www.moonzoo.org

http://www.onlinecharttool.com

(slide 36) http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/LunarOrbiterDigitization/Pilot/lunorbWebovervu .html

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/oxides/ileminite/ileminite.html

Http://www.mindat.org

Thank You!!!

Red Bank High School 2011