Elevation, LRO laser altimeter

0%

Cybermoon

The Moon, in its true colors

Titanium reads blue, iron reads rose. Rebuilt from NASA lunar data and set to I Really Want to Stay at Your House.

Phase
 
Illuminated
 
Moon age
0.0 d
Facing
0.0°N 0.0°E
Surface
2k

  1. Mare Tranquillitatis 8.5°N 31.4°E

    Titanium runs blue

    Ilmenite, a titanium oxide, reflects more blue light. Tranquillitatis is rich in it, and Apollo 11 landed on its southwest shore.

  2. Mare Crisium 17.0°N 59.1°E

    Iron without the titanium

    A basin about 550 km across, walled off from its neighbours. Its lavas carry iron but less titanium, so the wash leans rose.

  3. Mare Serenitatis 28.0°N 17.5°E

    Warm at the heart, blue at the rim

    The centre is low-titanium basalt and reads peach. Older titanium-rich flows ring its edge, where Apollo 17 sampled them.

  4. Theophilus 11.4°S 26.4°E

    Where every crater casts a shadow

    On the line between day and night the Sun sits on the horizon. Each shadow here is traced through real elevation data.

  5. Night side earthshine

    The dark side, lit by Earth

    Sunlight bounced off Earth reaches the night side, faint and slightly blue. Leonardo da Vinci explained it five centuries ago.

Built from mission data

Near side of the Moon colored by titanium and iron abundance
Titanium and iron Clementine UVVIS abundance maps. Titanium picks the hue, iron sets how strongly it shows.
Shaded elevation of the lunar near side
Elevation LOLA laser altimetry, 16-bit, displaced into a 525k-vertex mesh in Blender.
Slope texture around Theophilus crater
Slopes at 16k Streamed in tiles as you zoom. Shadows are ray-marched through the height field every frame.
The score Dissected from the record itself: split into stems, then drums, bass, synths and voice transcribed to a 125 BPM grid. The rebuilt band plays these notes with drum hits and bass sampled from the stems.

Turn it under the Sun

Drag to rotate. Scroll to zoom until single craters fill the screen.

Elevation
LRO LOLA, via the NASA SVS CGI Moon Kit
Albedo
LROC WAC Hapke-normalised mosaic, same kit
Minerals
Clementine UVVIS TiO₂ and FeO, via NASA Moon Trek
Sky
HYG star catalogue v4.1; Milky Way panorama ESO/S. Brunier (CC BY 4.0)
Song
Rosa Walton and Hallie Coggins
Scores
Piano arrangements by m_E and by Mel Mayuga (transcribed by Bomb & Kou)
Analysis
Demucs source separation, Basic Pitch, CREPE, pYIN, librosa
Instruments
Drums and bass sampled from the stems; Salamander Grand Piano (CC BY 3.0); FluidR3 GM