Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Second Conference on the Lunar Highlands

First Results: from Figure 2, "Preliminary results on the structure of lunar highland crust from GRAIL and LOLA altimetry," Zuber & Smith, et al, (#9015, Second Conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust, 2012) Preliminary GRAIL gravity field for the 86-km-diameter Tycho crater. Tycho is the prominent structure at upper left. In this GRAIL map reds correspond to mass excesses and blues to mass deficits. GRAIL gravity has a spatial resolution of 18 kilometers [NASA/JPL/MIT].
Clive Neal
Notre Dame

The first conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust was held in 1979. Since that seminal meeting, our knowledge of the lunar highlands has advanced enormously. Unimagined new data have become available, notably in orbital remote sensing of mineralogy, chemistry, topography, and gravity; geochronology; and geochemistry, especially isotopic constraints and the abundances and natures of lunar volatiles. These new data are paralleled by new concepts of solar system science, including the importance and timing of impact events (including the one that formed the Moon) and the nature of the early solar system disk and its dynamical instabilities. 

In light of these advances in the last 34 years, the time seems right for a synoptic reexamination of the lunar highlands crust. The Second Conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust is intended to bring members of the planetary science community together to share their specialized insights into the lunar highlands crust, exchange ideas freely, and perhaps develop new cross-disciplinary ideas and tests of those ideas.

A field trip to the Stillwater Mine will be held on Thursday, July 12, and a field trip to Picket Pin Mountain will be held on Monday, July 16 (departing Bozemanon Sunday, July 15, following the conclusion of the final oral session). More details about the field trips, along with information about registration, accommodations, transportation, and much more, are available in the final announcement.

For more information, visit the conference website, HERE.

"Preliminary results on the structure of lunar highland crust from GRAIL and LOLA altimetry," Zuber & Smith, et al, (#9015, Second Conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust, 2012)

Related: Lunar Picture of the Day (LPOD), "First Results," June 13, 2012, Charles Wood

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