This color image of the Moon was taken by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)" class="extiw" title="en:Galileo (spacecraft)">Galileo</a> spacecraft at 9:35 a.m. PST Dec. 9, 1990, at a range of about 350,000 miles (560,000 km). The color composite uses monochrome images taken through violet, red, and near-infrared filters. The concentric, circular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Orientale" class="extiw" title="en:Mare Orientale">Orientale</a> basin, 600 miles (970 km) across, is near the center; the nearside is to the right, the far side to the left. At the upper right is the large, dark <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanus_Procellarum" class="extiw" title="w:Oceanus Procellarum">Oceanus Procellarum</a>; below it is the smaller <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Humorum" class="extiw" title="w:Mare Humorum">Mare Humorum</a>. These, like the small dark Mare Orientale in the center of the basin, formed over 3 billion years ago as basaltic lava flows. At the lower left, among the southern cratered highlands of the far side, is the South-Pole-Aitken basin, similar to Orientale but twice as great in diameter and much older and more degraded by cratering and weathering. The cratered highlands of the near and far sides and the Maria are covered with scattered bright, young ray craters.
NASA/JPL
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00113">http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00113</a>