July 1, 2014
New View of Old Domes
image by Avani Soares, Brazil
Avani has a new telescope and has been been introducing it to the Moon. This image is covers the hilly and domey region west of Copernicus. This is one of the most dome rich areas of the Moon. Avani has just marked a few to provide orientation - fuller identification is provided on the images page of the Consolidated Lunar Dome Catalogue by the GLR group. A few years ago Patrick McGovern and colleagues at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston proposed that this area of domes occurs on a 300 km wide by 2 km high large volcanic shield. The shield and the dome fields occur here because this is an annular zone of maximum stress (bending) caused by the filling of the Imbrium Basin by Mare Imbrium lavas. The crust was weakened by the stress, allowing magma to make pathways from the mantle to the surface. A question the theory does not address is why these eruptions produced so many domes, whereas most eruptions didn't. Was the magma flow rate or its composition different, and if so why?
Chuck Wood
Related Links
21st Century Atlas chart 21.
Yesterday's LPOD: A Red Moon?
Tomorrow's LPOD: Smooth Evidence
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