On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
High Relief of Alphonsus Peak, made at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, Arizona, April 1966
Ralph Turner American
Not on view
Turner was a young artist teaching at the University of Arizona, Tucson, when the astronomer Gerard Kuiper invited him to create three-dimensional scale models based on NASA’s Ranger photographs. Working with images made by Ranger 9, Turner sculpted this high relief of the central peak of Alphonsus crater. To determine the elevations, he used a lighting system that simulated the angle of the sun on the lunar surface, building up the model until it matched the photographs. Turner’s models helped astronomers better understand and visualize the moon’s topographic features.
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
