Named after the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, this 31-km diameter crater lying in Oceanus Procellarum is one of a
small number of craters which basically lies in isolation and is relatively young with an estimated age of less than
1.1 billion years. Inspection of the image below reveals several interesting features including an explicit surrounding
ray pattern indicative of an impact of some sort; a shadow pattern which is a reflection of the nearly 3-km high
surrounding walls; a slight suggestion of a central relief; and various craterlets and domes in all four directions. The
impressive twin craters to the north are Herodotus and Aristarchus; crater Euler is at the northeast corner of the image
whereas crater Lansberg is the large formation on the southeast corner.
Note: Careful inspection of the image below reveals a beautiful set of radial spokes emanating
from the crater, particularly towards the southwest, west, northwest and north.
Crater: Kepler Quadrant: NW Lunar Coordinates: 8.1° N, 38.0° W Diameter: 31.0 km Height: 2750 m Lunation Age: 23d 15h 54m Phase: 108.3° Diameter: 31.27' Magnitude: -9.4 Rukl: 30 |
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Date: Oct 20, 2003 05:25:38 UT+3 Location: Athens, Greece Equipment: Celestron 14" SCT Losmandy G-11 GEM Nikon Coolpix 995 ScopeTronix STWA14 Adapter Exposures: 1 x 1/15 sec @ f3.0 ISO 200 JPG RGB Fine image format 2048x1536 image size Autodark subtraction Software: Photoshop V6 Processing: Despeckle Unsharp Masking Resampling (30%) JPG Compression |