One of the most dominant features on the eastern edge of the moon is Mare Crisium, a large circular formation with a very
flat floor measuring approximately 620 by 570 km and covering an area of approximately 176,000 sq meters. Mare Crisium
is estimated to have been formed between 3.85 and 3.92 billion years ago and is characterized with a flat surface with
evidence of wrinkling on the eastern and western edges. Some features of interest include two craters near the western
edge, Picard with a diameter of 23 km and Peirce with a diameter of 18.5 km, and Promontorium Agarum to the southeast.
Also visible in the image below are four dorsa - dorsum Termier (3 km wide, 90 km long) is the ridge formation running
above and below the Luna 15 crash site; similarly, dorsum Harker (11 km wide, 200 km long) is the ridge immediately
below the landing site for Luna 24; dorsum Oppel (7 km wide, 300 km long) is the ridge formation immediately above
crater Peirce; and, finally, dorsum Tetyaev (11 km wide, 150 km long) is visible in the northeast periphery of Mare
Crisium running immediately due south.
Note: The image below was taken slightly past full moon. This area is perhaps of greater
observational interest immediately following a new moon when the two above-mentioned craters seem like snake-eyes in
the eyepiece (an image capturing this effect has been attempted repeatedly without success so far).
Note: Luna 15 unexpectedly crashed near the southern limb of Mare Crisium without warning one
week prior to the July 20, 1969 landing of Apollo 11 in Mare Tranquillitatis. Similarly, Luna 24 successfully
soft-landed further east of the Luna 15 crash site on Aug 14, 1976. The crash site for Luna 15 and the soft-landing area
for Luna 24 are indicated in the image below. A complete enumeration of all landing sites for
Apollo,
Luna and
Surveyor craft are available elsewhere on this site.
Body: Moon Mass: 0.0123 x Earth Mean Eq Diameter: 0.2719 x Earth Distance: 405,006 km Sidereal Rev: 27d 07h 43m 11s Age: 17d 01h 32m Phase: 28.0° Diameter: 29.81' Magnitude: -12.0 Rukl: 27 |
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Date: Oct 12, 2003 23:34:46 UT+3 Location: Athens, Greece (38.2997° N, 23.7430° E) Equipment: Celestron 14" SCT Losmandy G-11 GEM Nikon Coolpix 995 ScopeTronix STWA14 Adapter Exposures: 1 x 1/30 sec @ f3.1 ISO 100 JPG RGB Fine image format 2048x1536 image size Autodark subtraction Software: Photoshop V6 Processing: Despeckle Unsharp Masking Resampling (30%) JPG Compression |