Friday, October 1, 2010

The Far Shore of Palus Putredinis

Rima Bradley, surface manifestation of an apparently deep fault under the Apenninus piedmont (It's concentric with the Montes Apenninus front), and disappearing under Palus Putredinis. "Almost too much to take in," is the description frequently given to certain of the LROC Wide Angle Camera assemblies. This one is a 80 km-wide early morning look at a scene familiar to telescope observers on Earth, southwest of the Hadley Rille Valley and the Apollo 15 LZ. It is a mosaic of four monochrome (659nm) LROC WAC observations swept up in successive lunar orbits December 24, 2009.

Can you spot Putredinis 1, a 2 km wide pyroclastic vent, just off the southwest shore of Palus Putredinis? Is it yet another surface manifestation, the same stratigraphic source as Rima Bradley? [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Take a closer look at the WAC mosaic and find these two (of four) oblong "sinks" (Ann, left, near 25.1°N, 0.07°W, and Patricia, right; 800 to 1200 meters in length, respectively) tied into ancient Rima Vladimir, etched on a blasted plain pasted over a filled-in valley that radiates from Mare Imbrium's center. This image also is from a mosaic, left and right frames of LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M104519138; LRO orbit 562, August 10, 2009; alt. 145.98 km, res. 1.46 m, phase angle 55.94° [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

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