The Pocket Guide to Lunar Mineralogy
Ken Murphy / 4:16 am January 13th, 2006
One of the most important things to learn about the Moon is about the rocks of which it is made. This is pretty tough to do, because most of the Moon books that people find while out and about will be yet another re-hash of the Apollo experience. One should not lose hope though, as there are materials available to help learn more deeply about our little sister in space.
Most folks aren’t ready to tackle the Lunar Sourcebook right off the bat, so we’ll start out easy with a really handy and informative little pamphlet called “The Pocket Guide to Lunar Mineralogy: How Moon Rocks and Earth Rocks are Related” by David L. Coleman and Sarah Kennedy-Coleman. It’s published by Jensan Scientifics and runs a crisp 24 pages, with an additional 16 page color gallery of various rock shots.
It starts with a brief overview of the Big Whack theory and some background on why it appears as it does today. It covers some basic morphology and then dives right into the regolith. It serves as a very basic overview, so don’t expect a whole lot of explanation on why it’s useful to know that the olivine on the Moon ranges from iron-rich fayalite to the magnesium-rich forsterite, with the basaltic olivines generally falling in the middle of that range.
A fair knowledge of geology and mineralogy would definitely be helpful, but isn’t necessarily needed. Interestingly, the bibliography references the PERMANENT book. There’s also a set of 28 review questions in the back that would certainly prove helpful for educators.
If you want to learn more about what the Moon is made of, then this is probably the least scary way to get started. Jack Schmitt called it “A rockhound’s guide to the Moon!”. I’m going to give it a waxing three-quarter Moon.