Listen to audio clip of a lecture in an earth science course and then answer the question that follows.
Question: Using points and information from the lecture, describe the lunar surface as detailed by the professor.
Give yourself 20 seconds of preparation, then take 30 seconds to respond. Click below to see an example response to this question.
This lecture described Earth’s moon and focused on describing the lunar surface, which is the topography of the moon. The professor explains that our knowledge of the surface features mostly comes from the data obtained from the Apollo missions, where the astronauts conducted radiometric rock dating and studies of the densities of different craters. She explains that the moon’s face appearance is created by the fact that the surface has low lands that are dark, called maria, and highlands, called terrae, which are brighter and contain the various craters.
The maria and terrae are formed by different processes. The maria are smooth plains formed from liquidy basaltic lava flows, rather than violent eruptions from big volcano cones. The terrae are formed from rocks and lie several kilometers above the lowlands. Lastly, the lunar surface also has several impact craters from different collisions from large and small celestial bodies.