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The maria cover about 16% of the lunar surface, mostly on the side visible from Earth. The few maria on the far side are much smaller, residing mostly in very large craters. The traditional nomenclature for the Moon also includes one oceanus (ocean), as well as features with the names lacus ('lake'), palus ('marsh'), and sinus ('bay'). The last ...
The large and relatively young lunar impact crater Tycho taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. [1]This is a list of named lunar craters.The large majority of these features are impact craters.
The modern system of lunar nomenclature was introduced in 1651 by Giovanni Battista Riccioli. [1] Riccioli's map of the Moon was drawn by Francesco Maria Grimaldi, who has a crater named after him. A related set of features are the Lunar lacus / ˈ l eɪ k ə s / (singular also lacus, Latin for "lake"), [a] which are smaller basaltic plains of ...
Lunar nearside with major maria and craters labeled. Lunar maria (singular mare) are large, dark, regions of the Moon.They do not contain any water, but are believed to have been formed from molten rock from the Moon's mantle coming out onto the surface of the Moon.
Many tend to cover the floors of large impact basins and are therefore typically circular in outline, with some smaller maria filling the bottoms of impact craters. [5] The major lunar maria range in size from more than 200 km (120 mi) to about 1,400 km (870 mi) and are outclassed only by the larger Oceanus Procellarum, which has a diameter of ...
The crater Webb, as seen from Lunar Orbiter 1. Several smaller craters can be seen in and around Webb. Side view of the crater Moltke taken from Apollo 10. Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, all of which were formed by impacts.
'Ocean of Storms') is a vast lunar mare on the western edge of the near side of the Moon. It is the only one of the lunar maria to be called an "Oceanus" (ocean), due to its size: Oceanus Procellarum is the largest of the maria ("seas"), stretching more than 2,500 km (1,600 mi) across its north–south axis and covering roughly 4,000,000 km 2 ...
Historically, the principal concern of selenographists was the mapping and naming of the lunar terrane identifying maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other various features. This task was largely finished when high resolution images of the near and far sides of the Moon were obtained by orbiting spacecraft during the early space era.