Reflection imaging of the Moon's interior using deep-moonquake seismic interferometry

Journal article (2016)

Authors

Y. Nishitsuji Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics - CEG
CA Rowe Los Alamos National Laboratory
C.P.A. Wapenaar Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics - CEG
D.S. Draganov Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics - CEG
Research Group
Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics (CEG) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2016 Y. Nishitsuji, CA Rowe, C.P.A. Wapenaar, D.S. Draganov
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JE004975
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Published Date

09-04-2016

Language

English

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Faculty

Civil Engineering & Geosciences

Department

Geoscience and Engineering

Research Group

Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics

Abstract

The internal structure of the Moon has been investigated over many years using a variety of seismic methods, such as travel time analysis, receiver functions, and tomography. Here we propose to apply body-wave seismic interferometry to deep moonquakes in order to retrieve zero-offset reflection responses (and thus images) beneath the Apollo stations on the nearside of the Moon from virtual sources colocated with the stations. This method is called deep-moonquake seismic interferometry (DMSI). Our results show a laterally coherent acoustic boundary around 50 km depth beneath all four Apollo stations. We interpret this boundary as the lunar seismic Moho. This depth agrees with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) SELenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) result and previous travel time analysis at the Apollo 12/14 sites. The deeper part of the image we obtain from DMSI shows laterally incoherent structures. Such lateral inhomogeneity we interpret as representing a zone characterized by strong scattering and constant apparent seismic velocity at our resolution scale (0.2–2.0 Hz).