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Lunar #83: Plato craterlets

L83 main image L83 main image at increased contrast and scale L83 in shaded relief texture

Plato is a large crater of 101 km diameter that perforates the mountain range between Mare Imbrium and Mare Frigoris. Uncommonly, there is no central peak. Rather, the crater floor is flooded with lava. On this flat floor are serveral small craterlets of which three to five can be made out in the image.

Refer to Wood's list (2004a and 2012a) and to his notes (cf. Hardwick 2013a). Compare your observation with the Atlas virtuel de la Lune (Chevalley and Legrand 2012a). In this atlas, at high resolution, in general, consider a photographic texture like the LRO WAC mosaic as well as the synthesised topography of the LOLA Kaguya Shade texture. For regions near the lunar limb, changing from the foreshortened Earthlings' perspective to the vertical view down on the Moon can be instructive.

Images:

  1. The area on 2022-02-11, stacked from 370 video frames taken with a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector of D = 200 mm and f = 3500 mm and Canon EOS 600Dα camera. Wavelet sharpening. Annotated with a scale. The phase was +78%.
  2. Dto., scaled up twofold and with increased contrast.
  3. Screenshot from Atlas virtuel de la Lune (Chevalley and Legrand 2012a).