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I was poking around this Gigapan image of the moon's north polar region, when I noticed this area:

enter image description here

What is the source of these light streaks?

For position reference, here's a zoomed-out shot (I couldn't easily get coordinates from the Gigapan thing):

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ can you please highlight the elements you are calling "streaks"? $\endgroup$
    – Jeremy
    Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 3:41
  • $\begingroup$ They are the faint criss-crossing lines throughout the image. Most of them are diagonal top-left to bottom-right. I tried to bring them out with some image processing but the results weren't very helpful. $\endgroup$
    – sinelaw
    Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 14:08
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe it's a sort of pareidolia. At any rate, I'm not understanding what you are seeing. Perhaps you can overdraw an image and add it so that we all know what it is you are referring to $\endgroup$
    – Jeremy
    Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ I don’t think it’s pareidolia. The structures (I assume) OP is referring to do look a little bit like small dunes. They seem to be aligned a bit to form the „streaks“, in multiple directions (I think two or three), so a criss cross pattern emerges. My guess would be ejecta from meteor hits or something that was established when the moon was in the process of creation. $\endgroup$
    – Hartmut Braun
    Commented Sep 10, 2021 at 5:43

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The streaks you are referring to I would rather call ridges.

The surface of the moon is of course not a perfectly flat and the same way as Earth has ups and downs, there are ridges on the Moon, too.

You say that most of them are diagonal - top-left to bottom-right but on the right hand corner of the image, there are ones vertical ones. So, there is no specific orientation for these "streaks".

On the other hand, if there were streaks around a crater such that concave part of the streaks point towards the crater, they are due to shock waves travelling outwards from the point of impact.

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