December 5, 2010
New Light On the Basin Near Schiller
LRO DEM image by " rel="nofollow Maurice Collins, Palmerston North, New Zealand
When Bill Hartmann and Gerard Kuiper first " rel="nofollow described this overlooked basin near Schiller, they gave it that prosaic name. Later the US Geological Survey Moon mappers initiated a system of calling basins by craters on opposite sides and this feature became known as the Schiller-Zucchius Basin. It differs from most of the more familiar nearside basins in having a mountainous inner ring (where it is preserved) and at first glance seems to be a two-ring basin. Seems to be implies it isn't and that is probably true, but maybe not. There is an inner depression that is marked by ghost crater-like gentle ridges - a possible third ring - but it is decidedly off-center from the other two rings, and could be a random impact that occurred and was later buried when the basin was flooded by lava. Not all basin rings are perfectly concentric so this could be a three-ring basin. When Maurice processed this digital terrain image he noticed the line of small hills near the middle of the inner ghost ring. He found them on a LRO Wide Angle Camera frame and commented, correctly, that they looked like the rough-textured Marius Hills domes. It is not surprising the find volcanic cones - if that is what they are - in the center of a widespread sea of mare lavas, but most maria show little evidence of the vents that may have fed them.
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" rel="nofollow Chuck Wood
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