February 14, 2018
Introducing Kimura
Originally published September 5, 2008
image from JAXA/Selene Photo Gallery
JAXA/Selene has quietly released another Terrain Camera (TC) image and resulting oblique and stereo views. To the left is a reduced example of one of the vertical looking TC images showing the farside Kimura to be a 28 km wide crater in the messy transition to a complex crater. Selene scientists used overlapping TC images to derive a digital terrain model (or 3D topo map), which then had an imaged draped over it, and was reprojected from an oblique view. The vertical view shows that the crater is oval, presumably due to chaotic collapses of the walls, which elongated the rim and deposited debris on the wall and the floor. Despite the sharp rim crest, the smoothness of the inner walls suggests that enough time has passed for the bare scarps that probably existed to become muted. The smooth ponds on the floor are impact melt, but I can only guess that a small central peak is part of the curved ridge that crosses the crater floor.
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
Oops! The Moon Wiki has the wrong image for Kimura! We will have to update it with this Kaguya/Selene one, all together appropriate for the Japanese astronomer the crater honors.
Yesterday's LPOD: Lines of Little Holes
Tomorrow's LPOD: Kids & the Moon
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