Comments on: Mooning away Tuesday http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/ Blogging one sidereal day at a time Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:26:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: bbb06e45c5a1 http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/comment-page-1/#comment-24486 bbb06e45c5a1 Thu, 15 May 2008 15:50:54 +0000 http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/#comment-24486 <strong>bbb06e45c5a1...</strong> bbb06e45c5a1c6fc4f6d... bbb06e45c5a1…

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]]> By: Astrogeek http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/comment-page-1/#comment-23602 Astrogeek Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:44:46 +0000 http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/#comment-23602 Hi Pamela; My geo classes where a while back, but I think I can help you out with Basalt... Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock: meaning it was extruded (flowed out onto the surface) from a volcano or other volcanic source. It is typified by it's density (it's a heavy rock) and it's fine grained crystalline structure (since it cooled rapidly, being out on the surface, the internal grains are very small). This makes it different than, for example, the granites, which are an 'intrusive' rock... they both formed from magma, but one (basalt) reached the surface, flowed out as lava and cooled rapidly, and one (granite) did not reach the surface, but instead squeezed itself into other rock formations, and cooled slowly under pressure. The numbers you cite above indicate that the lava that formed the mare basalts was very thin and runny... which is not surprising since the moon is made up of much lower density material than the earth. Hi Pamela;

My geo classes where a while back, but I think I can help you out with Basalt…

Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock: meaning it was extruded (flowed out onto the surface) from a volcano or other volcanic source. It is typified by it’s density (it’s a heavy rock) and it’s fine grained crystalline structure (since it cooled rapidly, being out on the surface, the internal grains are very small). This makes it different than, for example, the granites, which are an ‘intrusive’ rock… they both formed from magma, but one (basalt) reached the surface, flowed out as lava and cooled rapidly, and one (granite) did not reach the surface, but instead squeezed itself into other rock formations, and cooled slowly under pressure.

The numbers you cite above indicate that the lava that formed the mare basalts was very thin and runny… which is not surprising since the moon is made up of much lower density material than the earth.

]]> By: Vagueofgodalming http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/comment-page-1/#comment-23600 Vagueofgodalming Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:31:34 +0000 http://www.starstryder.com/2008/03/12/mooning-away-tuesday/#comment-23600 You touch on an interesting point (well, all your posts are interesting, but I don't often have anything to say): that it seems astronomers are much more likely to get that there are people who don't know what an emission nebula or an elliptical galaxy is, than (planetary) geologists are to get that there are people who don't know what basalt or cratering chronology is. You touch on an interesting point (well, all your posts are interesting, but I don’t often have anything to say): that it seems astronomers are much more likely to get that there are people who don’t know what an emission nebula or an elliptical galaxy is, than (planetary) geologists are to get that there are people who don’t know what basalt or cratering chronology is.

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