Moon in near infrared
Moon in near infrared
These four images of the Moon were created using infrared image data acquired in December 1992 during the flyby of the Earth-Moon system conducted by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. They were acquired with the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS). The view is directed towards the Moon's North Pole; the coloured areas show the northern hemisphere of the Earth-facing side of the Moon. The spectral channels of the instrument ranged from visible light to near-infrared wavelengths (5.2 micrometres). The different (false) colours give information about the geochemical and mineralogical composition of the surface. The MERTIS spectrometer on board ESA's BepiColombo Mercury mission will now be the first to image Earth's satellite with two sensors, covering wavelengths down to the thermal infrared – between 7 and 14 micrometres and 7 and 40 micrometres, respectively, as it flies past the Earth and the Moon.
