Lunar Rays

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Corrections

Current production geometry is on the left; the proposed replacement is on the right. Pending and rejected proposals are not applied to events or production renders. “Reported event” summarizes the observer's description; follow its link to check the full source before changing a review status. Approved changes leave this list: their reasoning moves to the feature's own correction badge on the events tab.

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ⓘ about Lunar Rays

Terrain rendered from LOLA LDEM_128 (LRO), 237 m/pixel, using full subsolar latitude and longitude. For floor rays, the red outline starts from a model indication of sunlight passing through a narrow rim gap, then follows the connected illuminated, low-slope floor streak to its connected modelled extent. Rim light, bridges, caves and other clair-obscur types are identified but not given a ray outline. Click a picture for the animation, finder charts and the place on the Moon. On a touch screen, the first tap shows the outline and the second tap opens the animation. Times are in your browser time zone. Images show representative illumination, not the exact appearance at each listed date. Finder charts use mean libration and projected angular scales at the Moon's mean distance; close-ups are north-up terrain maps with surface-kilometre scales. Solar latitude, libration and actual ray visibility vary between recurrences. Shadows use a point Sun and sampled terrain; penumbra and unresolved rim gaps are not modelled. Visibility uses geometric topocentric altitude, without atmospheric refraction. Catalogued solar altitude defines recurrence timing; source colongitude, recurrence reference and any display-only anchor remain separate. A red outline is drawn only on the peak frame where it was measured. The source badge says where an event comes from and links to its evidence page. The corrections tab shows every documented-versus-proposed geometry pair; pending proposals are not applied. The new tab shows unverified candidates from our own survey of the whole near side, ranked by how often and how strongly they show up.