Lunar south pole mosaic

This mosaic of the lunar south pole was obtained with images taken by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1.

The pictures were taken between Dec 2005 and March 2006, during lunar southern summer. When obtaining the images, SMART-1 was flying over the south pole at a distance of about 500 km, allowing individual images with small-field (about 50 km across) high resolution views (50 m/pixel).

Each individual image includes areas imaged with colour filters and a more exposed area. The differences have been corrected accordingly to obtain this mosaic. The mosaic, composed of about 40 images obtained over more than 30 orbits, covers an area of about 500 by 150 km. The lunar near-side facing Earth is at the top of the map, while the far-side is at the bottom.