Failed skylights of Copernicus

More than mere melt fracture, a narrow skylight among myriad melt fractures in the chaotic interior of the familiar nearside landmark Copernicus, at a resolution of 40 centimeters per pixel from 25.4 kilometers, August 18, 2011. LROC Narrow Angle Camera observation M168333206L; illumination from the southwest (bottom left) of directly overhead, angle of incidence 38.23° [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Joel Raupe
Lunar Pioneer

The LROC targeting team had already extensively mapped the interior of Copernicus before the brief period last August when the low point in the LRO polar orbit was reduced by half, sometimes below 25 kilometers. Copernicus might be the most photographed lunar crater after Tycho. Both of these relatively young impact craters are difficult to miss in any view of a waxing Moon seen from Earth. Both craters center on extensive and bright ray systems, and Tycho's being the youngest of the two can be picked out with the naked eye.

Copernicus, though larger than Tycho, seems less intense, almost smudged, and, indeed, it is more faded a more along in years, nearly old enough for the inevitable effects of space weathering to have gardened its face with optical maturity.

The interior, slumped terraced walls, rim and some of the ejecta blanket of Copernicus as seen in one of the very first LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) mosaics released by Arizona State University in early 2010. At its roughly 800 million year age Copernicus, namesake of the "revolutionary" polish astronomer Nicolas Copernic (1473-1543), has lent its name to the Copernican Age on the lunar timescale, that relatively recent and relatively sparse period of bombardment. Its interior is flatter in the north than at the south and features three central peaks. A bifurcated pattern to its rays system and topography has led some to speculate at least two progenitors of nearly equal size were involved in this impact event [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

As LROC team member James Ashley was spotlighting the melt fractures of Jackson crater earlier this month we were already performing a survey of the same features on the floor of Copernicus, particularly within the crater's north-central and "more featureless" interior. The melt fractures within Copernicus seem more extensively gardened, and may have formed in a somewhat different way than those at Jackson. At Copernicus there seems to have been, or still may be, voids under the impact melt, and some evidence of what may be bubbling, places that seem to be half-submerged solid rubble on the floor of Tycho, for example, may be place where gases were trapped for a time, escaping after the impact melt had rapidly cooled and solidified.

The north central floor of Copernicus only seems less distinctive than the jumbled topography of its surroundings. Barely visible in this LROC WAC monochrome (643 nm) image is a web of fractures and channels throughout the most level terrain above. A 35 km-wide field of view from LROC WAC observation M147109260C, orbit 6813, December 16, 2010; resolution 60.3 meters per pixel at an incidence angle of 78° from 43.13 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Both the north and south ends of this 42 meter-wide exposed fracture on the floor of Copernicus are nearly buried or are not quite as wide as this section. While its tempting to see the western side as an overhang, and despite the apparent differences in the opposing edges, the exposed rift is likely only slightly deeper and more shadowed. There is evidence enough for voids under the floor of Copernicus but the more obvious clues have been pulverized by space weathering and moon quakes since the crater's formation. LROC NAC observation M157730473L, orbit 8379, April 18, 2011; angle of incidence 24.32° on a field of view 270 meters wide at a resolution of 0.47 meters from 37.85 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Is this 300 meter-wide feature on the floor of Copernicus a crater, a void shaken to collapse or a little of both? Apparent layering in rapidly cooling impact melt may be a result of differing arrival times of the melt. LROC NAC M168333260L [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. 

The area of interest on the floor of Copernicus is distinguished by its melt fractures, many obvious and others mysterious. The traces of these fractures are often marked with pits, their openings too shadowed or narrow to measure - even discovering whether any are really open at all and what may lay below awaiting future exploration. Between the two "pits" appears to be a spot long collapsed - but what if anything actually collapsed? Also from LROC NAC M168333206L [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Zoom in, out and around this area of interest in Copernicus using the LROC QuickMap, HERE, in views like the one below.