PIA12954: Marius Hills Pit -- Lava Tube Skylight?
 Target Name:  Moon
 Is a satellite of:  Earth
 Mission:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
 Spacecraft:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
 Instrument:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (NAC)
 Product Size:  1000 x 1000 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Arizona State University
 Other  
Information: 
More details and images at LROC
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA12954.tif (1.001 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA12954.jpg (128.4 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

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The Marius Hills pit is a possible skylight in a lava tube in an ancient volcanic region of the Moon called the Marius Hills. This LROC image is the highest resolution image of the pit to date. Image width is 500 meters, pixel width is 0.5 meters, NAC M114328462R.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera was designed to acquire data for landing site certification and to conduct polar illumination studies and global mapping. Operated by Arizona State University, the LROC facility is part of the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). LROC consists of a pair of narrow-angle cameras (NAC) and a single wide-angle camera (WAC). The mission is expected to return over 70 terabytes of image data.

Image Credit:
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Image Addition Date:
2010-03-01