Highres moon fresh impact crater

[multiweb]

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/1003

Zoomable tiff pic at the bottom of the article.

[JeniSkunk]

Thanks for the link to this, Marc. :)
Grabbing the .TIF for examination at my leisure.

[Dennis]

Wow Marc, that zoomable tif was just quite breathtaking, such extraordinary detail with so much clarity.:thumbsup:

Time to retire my Mewlon from lunar photography methinks...;)

Cheers

Dennis

[MortonH]

What an awesome image!

[PhilTas]

Thanks Marc,
I really enjoy these lunar articles.
The hires image is excellent.
cheers Phil

[silv]

breathtaking detail. Thanks for posting the link.

What's also visible in full detail: the centre of the crater is not a mountain like in many others. And the rim and debris dispersion around it are not perfectly round like many other craters' surroundings - but shows that the object impacted at an angle.

So this looks like what I would expect an impact crater to look like. A visible impact angle and no mountain in the middle.

I don't understand the scientific assumption that the centre mountains visible in many other craters got created by some form trampoline-effect: when the debris at the bottom jumps up again and then collects in a uniform centre mountain.

Equally I don't understand why craters look a perfectly round shape without a trace of angled impact in the rim nor in the surrounding area where the fallout debris came down. That rim and debris pattern should look like this: < and not like this: o

What do you guys think?

[Wavytone]

Annette, regarding the impacts at an oblique angle - the clue for these is asymmetry in the way the ejecta are distributed around it, usually most of the material is in the forward direction and very little in the rearward direction.

Also bear in mind the cratering occurred in several phases. Early on the moon still had a semi-molten core so impacts were like hitting a big ball of stiff goo, and the central mountains on crater floors resulted from hydraulic pressure forcing the centre up, since the crater floors were a few hundred metres below the surface. And bear in mind the density of rock is ~ 6X that of water so the forces are immense.

[julianh72]

Here's a link to the same crater on the recently-posted LROC zoomable Moon map:
https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/projections?extent=-4.7192221,-33.1158658,-4.2337383,-32.8758577&proj=10&layers=NrBsFYBoAZIRnpEoAsjZwLrc0A
(Thanks multiweb!)

The LROC imagery gives a straight-down perspective, so the asymmetry from the oblique impact is even more apparent, but the flat crater floor is less apparent. The LROC imagery seems to go to slightly higher resolution, but the crater is covered by several passes, and the illumination is a bit dark in some parts in the default layers. (I'm not sure if this can be improved by selecting different layers to view.)

These are fantastic resources, enabling lunar exploration from the comfort of your armchair - thanks to the OPs for sharing!

[gary]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the link.

A jaw dropping photo and an all-round wonderful web site.

I happened across this page where they discuss "Quantifying Crater Shapes" :-
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/864



It reminded me of the character Slartibartfast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast) in Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". :lol:

Slartibartbast is a designer of planets and he is working on the design
for the coastline of Africa for a new Earth after the original was destroyed.



Slartibartfast would probably reach for fractals rather than polynomials. :lol:

[multiweb]

There's a bunch of line and polygon tools that you can drag and create elevation profiles on the map as well. You need to select the tool, click once then click again to finish the line then again on the end and a graph will popup. That rebound mount in the middle of Tycho is 2000m. We're talking Mount Kosciuszko there. Imagine the energy of the impact to create something that high which is basically just like the little column of water that bounces back when a drop falls on a liquid surface. I reckon you wouldn't want to be on the moon anywhere when that happened. :lol:

[JeniSkunk]

Thanks for the link Julian. Shows how small that crater really is.
No wonder I couldn't see it in my poor little 130mm scope, even with my 6.5mm eyepiece and 2x Barlow, when I tried looking for it this evening.

[gary]

Full press release here :-

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/team-scientists-led-u-t-identify-period-increased-asteroid-impacts-ancient-earth-studying-moon

[silv]

That's interesting, Gary.
290 Mio years ago something upset the belts, Jovian, Kuiper or Oort, and sent stuff flying towards moon and earth.

Could have been a wandering body like Gliese 710 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710) which is coming towards the solar system and will upset the assumed Oort cloud in about 1.2 Mio years.

Theoretically, if you had a more capable computer than I do, one could use GaiaSky (https://zah.uni-heidelberg.de/institutes/ari/gaia/outreach/gaiasky/) to find out which body, if any, touched our system 290 Mio years ago.
GaiaSky is a 3D visualisation program incorporating the Gaia Data release 2. Runs on Wind, Linx, Mac.

To see what Gliese 710 is up to, I let GaiaSky "run" into the future on my Mac. But the computation of so much data didn't complete; my Mac being too weak - or maybe I just didn't give it enough time to catch up with things?