What is true of the lunar highlands? They are the oldest part of the lunar surface. they range from 4.6 – 4.4 billion years old, on average. the Moon lacks wind, water and an atmosphere.
What is true about the Moon’s highlands?
Compared to geology of the Lunar Highlands: ● Lunar highlands have more impact craters than the mare. So, the highlands are older. They are the same age as the highlands because both features were formed by the hardening of lava. Also, they are mafic in composition, which means they were created by magma.
What are the lunar highlands?
highlands: the lighter, heavily cratered regions of the Moon, which are generally several kilometers higher than the maria. mare: (plural: maria) Latin for “sea;” the name applied to the dark, relatively smooth features that cover 17% of the Moon’s surface.
What are lunar highlands quizlet?
The lunar highlands are light-colored areas elevated above the Maria. The highlands are largely made of low-density rocks rich in aluminum. The highlands are much older than the maria and are much more heavily cratered.
What elements are most common in the lunar highlands?
The lunar basalts, relatively rich in iron and many also in titanium, are found in the maria. In the highlands the rocks are largely anorthosites, which are relatively rich in aluminum, calcium, and silicon.
What is two special features of highlands on the Moon?
The highlands are heavily cratered and mountainous. We have learned that the maria are relatively young areas on the Moon which were generated after very large impacts penetrated the crust of our Moon and excavated basins. During later volcanic episodes, liquid magma came to the surface and filled these basins.
How did the lunar highlands form quizlet?
How did the lunar highlands form? As the molten Moon gradually solidified, lower-density rock floated to the surface and ultimately became the lunar highlands.
How are lunar highlands formed?
The Indian mission through the Moon mineralogy mapper has offered proof that the Moon’s highlands were formed by the eruption of a hot liquid inside the Moon’s surface popularly known as magma.
Do the lunar highlands contain active volcanoes?
This activity was originally thought to have petered out about 1 billion years ago, but more recent evidence suggests that smaller-scale volcanism may have occurred in the last 50 million years. Today, the Moon has no active volcanoes even though a significant amount of magma may persist under the lunar surface.
Are the lunar highlands the oldest?
The oldest lunar features are the lunar highlands. This is mainly determined by looking at the number of impact craters that the different areas of the moon have. The longer that a feature has been around, the more time it has had to be hit by the meteors that leave impact craters.
What are the features of the lunar lowlands?
These great plains are relatively smooth and have fewer large craters than other regions of the Moon. They are called lowlands or (more commonly) maria, the plural of the Latin word mare (meaning ocean or sea), because Galileo and other early telescope users thought they resembled large smooth areas of water.
Which rock type forms the lunar highlands?
Anorthosite is an important rock type on the surface of the Moon as it makes up most of the lunar highlands and crust. This sample collected by the astronauts of Apollo 16 has been determined to be 4.19 billion years old.
Which mineral is abundant in the lunar highlands?
Typically, plagioclase is by far the most abundant and there commonly are substantial amounts of pyroxenes and olivines. Together, these three mineral groups usually, but not always, make up >95% of the crystalline material in the rock and the regolith.
What are the major features of the lunar surface?
The lunar surface is divided into light-colored heavily cratered highlands and smooth dark lowland maria which are most prominent on the near side. The highlands are saturated with large craters owing to their greater age in comparison to the maria and dominate the lunar far side and most of the near side.
What color are lunar highlands?
red
Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea.
What is the most common feature on the lunar surface?
The dominant features of the lunar surface are the old heavily cratered highlands and the younger basaltic maria, mostly filling the large impact basins (see Figs. 1 and 3). There is a general scarcity of tectonic features on the Moon, in great contrast to the dynamically active Earth.
What are the main features of the highlands region?
Rising to an average elevation of 3,300 feet (1,000 metres) above sea level, the highlands are characterized by low mountains, hilly uplands, and tabular plateaus and include Mato Grosso Plateau and Paraná Plateau.
What are the characteristics of highlands?
Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills.
Whats the definition of highlands?
high·land ˈhī-lənd. : elevated or mountainous land.
What caused lunar mountains?
The moon has neither tectonic plates nor volcanic action. Virtually all of its mountains are the result of impacts by asteroids in the distant past. Early in the moon’s history, there were many gigantic asteroids in the solar system.
What is the cause of the lunar phases quizlet?
What causes the phases of the moon? The moon’s phases are caused by the changing angles of the earth’s shadows and reflected sunlight as the moon revolves around the Earth over the course of about 1 month (28 days). An imaginary line where the Earth is tilted. You just studied 9 terms!