Nearside of the Moon

These images from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft show data for the hemisphere of the moon that faces Earth. The image on the left shows albedo, or the sunlight reflected from the surface of the moon. The image on the right shows where infrared light is absorbed in the characteristic manner that indicates the presence of water and hydroxyl molecules. That image shows that signature most strongly at the cool, high latitudes near the poles. The blue arrow indicates Goldschmidt crater, a large feldspar-rich region with a higher water and hydroxyl signature. Credit: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ.