April 6, 2024
Three Mysteries for the Price of Two
Originally published March 23, 2014
left image by Alejandro Sanz, Burgos, Spain and right image from LRO Quickmap (NASA/ASU)
Two things in a larger mosaic by Alex caught my attention and I clipped out just the piece that shows them. Do you notice them?
Notice on the floor of Parry (center, right) the semi-circular edge separating raised and heavily cratered terrain to the east from lower and smoother terrain to the west. The LRO QuickMap doesn't reveal such a sharp boundary, but the topo data show that the cratered part is 70-80 m higher than the smooth part. This could be a kipuka - a high remnant - of older rocks, but why isn't it covered by the smooth basin ejecta on the west side of the crater floor? The second anomaly I noticed is just to the west of Tolansky, the shadow-filled, 13 km wide simple crater at bottom-center. Do you see the two or three elongated slightly bright, flow-like features? These look like lava flows. But Quickmap shows no hint of them at all. Are they an artifact of processing and my enhancements? Finally, a third feature jumped out when I looked at the Quickmap of this area. Do you see the 2 km wide bright craterlet on the south rim of Parry? Quickmap (right image) reveals a fine tracery of rays extending to the north and west. The lack of rays in other directions suggests that this could be a crater formed by oblique impact. But the craterlet is on the inner slope of Parry's rim, and the north rim of the craterlet is about 700 m lower than the south rim. It may be that the slope directed ejecta to the north and west, even if the impact were vertical.
Chuck Wood
PS- If you click on QuickMap to increase magnification, when the NAC images appear some are flipped east to west. Check out Parry E and other strips to the west. I have never seen this error before on QuickMap.
Technical Details
March10, 2014, 19:13 U.T. C11 + 3x powermate + DMK31 + red filter
Related Links
21st Century Atlas chart 17.
Alex's website
Yesterday's LPOD: Seeping Out
Tomorrow's LPOD: An 19th Century Marvel
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