Our closest celestial neighbour has kept us company for at least four billion years and has entertained our imagination in a variety of ways. It certainly has been involved in our maturation as a species with man's first step on a body beyond our planet during the latter part of the twentienth century and will, inevitably, be our first stop prior to any sort of manned travel to a further celestial body such as Mars. The moon has been a great source of education about our own planet's evolutionary history; it has entertained many inquisitive minds from earlier cultures and generations about the universe in general and man's role in particular; it has enriched the minds of young children taking their first look through a telescope and continues to impact our lives in ways we may or may not readily recognize including tidal forces and various natural rhythms and cycles.

Note: The moon is invariably characterized as a colorless object whose features fall into one of the countless shades of black and white. Nevertheless, there are reports from Apollo mission astronauts as well as ground-based observers of color being noted, thus reinforcing the rich and geologically diverse nature of the lunar surface.

Although the modus operandi for astrophotographers is to also pursue the imaging of the moon in grayscale, thus implicitly reinforcing the notion that the moon is a monochrome celestial object, the image below indicates the injustice and loss of science that may occur when discarding RGB information for grayscale. To be more specific, careful inspection of lunar images indicate subtle colouration which can be enhanced using digital processing techniques to reveal characteristics surrounding the geological composition of the lunar surface. Using the image below, areas which are blue are associated with high titatium content whereas the converse is true for areas which are orange and rich in aluminum and iron. Titanium is of significance since it has a tendency to bind with available oxygen, thus allowing for the possibility that future habitation of the moon would involve mining and processing this available supply of oxygen for survival.

Note: The Galileo spacecraft has taken various false colour images of the lunar surface and which resemble the image below. For one such impressive example, click here. Additional examples are available here.