The week of November 12-18 takes us from Day 5 to Day 10. This week we will highlight the scarp Rupes Cauchy, viewable on Monday evening around 6:30.
Rupes Cauchy: [NE/J13] Two of the best-known faults on the Moon are Rupes Recta [Day 8; SW/M9] and Rupes Cauchy. They are fascinating to explore and they share remarkably similar neighborhoods: Both features are paralleled by a nearby rille, and in each case the rille and the fault are separated by an intervening small crater.
Northeast of Cauchy crater (7 mi.) you will find Rima Cauchy, a rille that is 130 miles long, 2½ miles wide, and twists itself into a tight double “u-turn” halfway between Cauchy crater and the rille’s northwest end. To the southwest of Cauchy is the 75-mile Rupes Cauchy, an impressive fault that actually changes into a rille at both ends. The changeover point occurs coincidentally at two small craters that mark where the fault line starts to curve slightly to the southwest. Look carefully and see if you can detect the difference between a rima (a long groove) and a rupes (a cliff). This will be more obvious at lunar sunrise as the Moon’s surface is higher on the northeast side of the fault and a conspicuous shadow will be cast toward the west. On Day 18 the setting Sun brightly illuminates the westward-facing slope of the fault. Because these two features are radial to the Serenitatis Basin they are probably associated with stresses that resulted from the Serenity impact nearly 3.9 billion years ago.
OF ADDITIONAL INTEREST IN SPACE:
The Leonid meteor shower will peak on Saturday, Nov. 17, and will be best seen between moonset around 12:40 a.m. and dawn. However, there will only be about 15 per hour.
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It is highly recommended that you get a copy of Sky and Telescope’s Field Map of the Moon, the very finest Moon map available for use at the telescope. It is available for $10.95 at www.skyandtelescope.com and on Amazon. All features mentioned in this blog will be keyed to the grid on the Field Map and will look like this: Plato: [NW/D9]
Credits:
Courtesy of Gray Photography of Corpus Christi, Texas
Lunar photos: NASA / USGS / BMDO / LROC / ASU / DLR / LOLA / Moon Globe. Used by permission
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