If you've ever wanted to download a ginormous image of the Moon and explore it, now's your chance: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera folks have released a monster 185 megapixel image of one of the biggest smackdowns on the Moon: Orientale Basin.
Yowza! Click to get the 1400 x 1400 pixel PNG, or you can try to swallow the 122 Mb TIF at the full resolution of 13,590 x 13,590 pixels! Orientale is a vast impact basin, the hole left by an asteroid that hit the Moon about three billion years ago. Looking like a humongous bulls-eye, it's a multi-ring crater, and the outer ramparts are a full 950 km (590 miles) across. That's half again bigger than my home state of Colorado. To give you an idea of just how big this is -- and also, to be honest, to scare myself a little -- I superimposed the picture ...
