The Moon's Surface

An essay to tie in with the Astronomy homework on the moon.

The Moon’s Surface

The moon’s surface is made up of many different features. This essay will take a look at some of them. The most obvious, and perhaps the most well known, are craters. There are craters of all shapes, sizes and stages of degradation. Some of the features of craters are:

· Crater chains: linear groups of small craters.
· Crater rays: formed from fresh-looking craters that have light coloured surroundings.
· Rilles: canyon-like trenches which cross the plains and floors of many large craters.
· Domes: Circular shaped protuberances, occasionally capped by craters, can be seen on the floors of large craters.

Other things that can be found on the moons surface include individual rock boulders, boulder fields and other such surface debris. All of this can be seen from high-resolution photos taken by spacecraft from lunar orbit. They provide us with a fascinating look at the surface of the Earth’s only natural satellite.

Now, a closer look at the dominant features of the moon’s surface.

Craters

Most of the moon’s surface is pitted with craters of all sizes. They range from barely-there shallow depressions to huge basins with sharply defined rims. Some are old, and degraded, and others are newer looking. Most of the lunar craters were formed by the bombardment of the surface by cosmic debris. Two of the moon’s craters, “Copernicus” and “Langrenus” have flat floors, with high mountains in the centre, these were most likely caused by something that happened post-impact.

A picture of the copernicus crater:



Crater Chains

These are straight line groupings of three or more closely spaced craters. The linear form of the craters suggest that they were all formed by the same process at the same time. Most crater chains consist of relatively small craters, formed by the debris from impacts of larger craters.

That came very close to coming in under word count, but the picture made up for it - 50 points.