Cosmoscope
A living map of the solar system
Explore lunar terrain with LRO elevations and orbital imagery around Apollo 17. Choose a point on the Moon and inspect crater relief, the horizon and changing sunlight.
Visit the Taurus–Littrow valley where Apollo 17 landed, explore Tycho crater, or choose another location on the lunar globe. Measured terrain shapes the ground and horizon at its true vertical scale.
LOLA laser altimetry supplies the global lunar shape. Around Apollo 17, a stereo digital terrain model and orthophotographs from LROC reveal the valley and smaller surface features. Photography is greyscale, as recorded by the Narrow Angle Camera.
The terminator is the boundary between day and night. Low sunlight reveals slopes and casts long shadows across measured lunar terrain. Sunrise and sunset controls move the simulation to an appropriate local Sun angle; terrain shadows are approximate and photographs retain their original illumination.
Use Choose a surface point, select a place on the visible globe, then choose Go down here. Local orbital photographs stream as you explore, using Chang’e-2 and Kaguya coverage with finer LROC photographs in surveyed regions. These images do not add height measurements: elevations outside the regional surveys remain coarser. The displayed image resolution and elevation spacing explain the available detail.
Source: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State University LROC.
Cosmoscope
A living map of the solar system
Find a world, a star, or somewhere further away.