COMPARISON OF COLOR AND COEFFICIENTS OF BRIGHTNESS OF DIFFERENT REGIONS ON THE LUNAR SURFACE WITH SOME TERRESTRIAL ROCKS

A comparison of the color and the coefficients of brightness of typical lunar formations with those of some terrestrial substances was made by photographic observations with five light filters: infrared, red, green, blue and ultraviolet. This comparison shows that the reflecting power of the lunar surface for the solar spectrum increases towards the red and infrared parts of the spectrum. This is especially noticeable for some mountainous regions and maria, as for example the central part of Mare Serenitatis and of some others. Most of the maria are green. The reflecting power of some areas of the lunar surface is very low in the ultraviolet. For other areas it is high. Some areas show anomalies in the infrared. It can be concluded that of the substances investigated, the following are most similar to the lunar surface: red quartz porphyry, quartz sandstone, auripigmentum, volcanic tuff and volcanic ashes from Kamchatka. A comparison with quartzitic sandstone and auripigmentum can hardly be real, but a comparison with volcanic effusional substances is genetically probable. Trans. of Astronomicheskii Zhurnal (USSR) v33 n4 p549-55 1956.