Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. The crazy, patchwork appearance of this false color image makes this nearly full view of our Moon's familiar nearside look very strange. The image was taken in 1992 by the Galileo spacecraft enroute to Jupiter. Three filters were used to make three separate exposures, combined in an exaggerated color scheme to emphasize composition differences - blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. NASA soon plans to conduct an extensive remote exploration of the lunar surface, including a search for water ice near the lunar South Pole, with the Lunar Prospector spacecraft .
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