Selenography facts for kids

"Lunar Day", from the book Recreations in Astronomy by H. D. Warren D. D., 1879. This represents a historical concept of the lunar surface appearance. Robotic missions to the Moon later showed that the surface features are much more rounded due to a long history of impacts.

Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon. Historically, the principal concern of selenographists was the mapping and naming of the lunar maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other various features. This task was largely finished when high resolution images of the near and far sides of the Moon were obtained by orbiting spacecraft during the early space era. Nevertheless, some regions of the Moon remain poorly imaged (especially near the poles) and the exact locations of many features (like crater depths) are uncertain by several kilometers. Today, selenography is considered to be a subdiscipline of selenology, which itself is most often referred to as simply "lunar science."

Images for kids

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  Topography of the Moon.

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  Michiel van Langren's map of the Moon, 1645

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  Map of the Moon by Johannes Hevelius (1647)

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  Samples of lunar maps in the Selenetopographische Fragmente by Johann Hieronymus Schröter.

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  Map of the Moon from the Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas (1881) by Richard Andree

See also

In Spanish: Selenografía para niños