July 9, 2008
Cheating Imagination?
image by Henrik Bondo
Many people have explored the wonderful large mosaic that was the source of the Orientale Basin LPOD last week. Henrik used the Lunar Terminator Visualization Tool to plot the positions of named and lettered craters (left image with red measles). He then drew the circles corresponding the diameters of all these craters (middle Clementine image) and somewhere along the way he discovered something that seemed suspicious. On the narrow image at the right Henrik has drawn a circle outlining a possible feature about 300 km in diameter with a center at 55°W and 76°S. Henrik wonders if this is a real feature or if his lively imagination cheats him with the Moon's strange morphological jigsaw puzzle? That is a good question that we may not be able to answer. I see a massive curved segment that defines the upper left portion of the putative crater's rim. And there is another isolated massif (mountain mass) just south (below) Casatus (see the left image for identification). Beyond that it is difficult to see other rim fragments, although there is a sense of circularity. But craters typically don't have large massifs inside them and this possible one does - at 43°W/78°S and 57°W/76°S (coords from the Clementine Atlas). When I was helping compile a crater catalog in the 1960s the most difficult task was deciding if a particular feature was a ruined crater or an overactive imagination. Henrik's feature is a structure that I probably would have skipped for there is not enough evidence to be convincing. That doesn't mean it isn't a crater, only that with these two images it isn't compelling enough. I wonder if these massifs are part of the rim of the South Pole-Aitken Basin? What do you think?
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
The left and right images are pieces from a large mosaic by Mikhail Abgarian, Yuri Goryachko, and Konstantin Morozov. Here are the details: June 27, 2008. Maksutov-Cassegrain Santel D=230mm F=3000mm, Astronomik Planet IR Pro filter (IR-pass 807nm+), Unibrain Fire-i 702 CCD b/w camera, (IEEE-1394, 1388x1040, 10fps, 12bit), Processing in Registax & Maxim DL. Mosaic of 12 images. Seeing 7/10, Trans 5/5.
Related Links
Rükl plate 72
Yesterday's LPOD: Four in a Row
Tomorrow's LPOD: Rilles And Hills
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