Sky & Telescope 15-cm Earth Globe
The mosaic used for this moon globe is made up of more than 15,000 images acquired by a camera aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) between November 2009 and February 2011. To create this globe, Sky & Telescope's editors worked with the LRO camera team and with specialists at the U.S. Geological Survey to create a customized base map with detail down to 1 kilometer. Special image processing preserved the natural shading of the moon's surface while clearly displaying its names. The names of more than 190 craters, lava plains, mountain ranges and other features are shown, as are the landing sites for Apollo and Luna spacecraft. The globe comes with a base and an information card describing key lunar facts and how the moon formed.