The Moon is white right? OK, OK… it only looks white because of the high contrast with the dark sky, it’s more grey.  What? No? You mean it has color?

From samples returned by the Apollo missions we know that two of the main minerals making up the lunar regolith is titanium oxide (TiO2) and iron oxide (FeO) based basalts.  While TiO2 is quite white and used in many household products from white toothpaste to white kitchen tiles, FeO is rust and closer to orange-brown (think Mars). On the Moon the result is a slightly blue-ish color in the areas with high TiO2, and more of a brown-red for the higher FeO and low TiO2 zones.

A normal image of the moon taken with DSRL, the different in hues is subtle as seen below.

Moon Natural Color (November 7, 2017) – Benoit Guertin

But it can be exaggerated by playing with the color saturation, and you get the image below, where various hues of blue-grey, orange and brown become apparent. The sharp boundaries between colors are caused by the different mineral make-up of the lava flows during the early formation of the Moon. Common interpretation of the age of the lunar surface is that the blue-grey areas are “younger” than the orange-brown.

Moon with exaggerated colors

Who says you can’t pull scientific information with simple backyard astronomy gear? The same technique, but with narrow-band filters is used by NASA and other space and research agencies to catalog the make-up of the lunar surface.

So if you are planning lunar prospecting for future mining rights, all you need is a telescope and a DSLR.