#rupes recta

[quiltofstars]

Rupes Recta ("Straight Cliff") in Mare Nubium ("Sea of Clouds") // Axel Vincent-Randonnier

Click below to read about this peculiar straight cliff and some of the craters nearby!

The Rupes Recta is a fault line on the Moon, stretching for 110 km (68 miles) at a height of about 240-300 m (790-985 ft). It is located in Mare Nubium, Latin for Sea of Clouds.

Some craters are nearby. From left to right:

Thebit crater is named after Thābit ibn Qurra (826-901), an Arabic astronomer who preserved the works of Ptolemy and calculated the length of a day to be 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 12 seconds (only off by 2 seconds!)

Birt crater is named for English astronomer William Radcliffe Birt (1804-1881) who carried out a lot of work researching Earth's atmosphere. He also published maps of the lunar surface.

Nicollet crater is named after French astronomer Joseph Nicolas Nicollet (1786-1843). He was a colleague of the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace and discovered a comet. He later emigrated to the United States where he led several expeditions of the Upper Mississippi River basin.

Wolf crater is named after Maximilian Wolf (1863-1932), a German astronomer and pioneer of astrophotography.

[without-ado]

Moon Mosaic; close-up l Daniel Meneses

[jmonterol]

RUPES RECTA

El hemisferio sur de nuestro satélite está intensamente craterizado. Sin embargo, hay formaciones que, en medio de un paisaje bombardeado, nunca se nos pueden escapar, incluso con el telescopio más sencillo. Una de ellas es Rupes Recta, una falla ubicada en Mare Nubium.

Tiene una longitud de 110 km y una anchura de 2-3 km. En contra de lo que puede parecer no es muy elevada, unos 300 m como máximo, y la pendiente es suave. Un astronauta podría escalarla fácilmente sin cansarse.

No hay consenso acerca de cuál es su origen. Los cráteres cercanos son también espectaculares; en otra entrada hablaré de ellos.

Maksutov Cassegrain 127. Cámara QHY 5II M.

[therealuniverse]

The Straight Wall This shot compiled from images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a large, partially destroyed crater known as the Ancient Thebit crater (the well-defined crater at the right is known as Thebit). At the center of the large crater is a famous spot known to lunar telescope observers known as Rupes Recta, which translates from Latin as the “Straight Cliff”. It is also more commonly known as the “Straight Wall”.

Rupes Recta is a 110-kilometer-long, steep fault scarp in the center of the old, degraded crater. It was originally noted by 17th century astronomer Christian Huygens, and modern day amateur astronomers can spot it in part thanks to the shadows it casts. As the sun rises on the lunar day, it casts a broad shadow out over the basin that can be readily seen as a straight, dark line. Rupes Recta is a normal fault. The crust on one side has dropped down by up to 400 meters, leaving a cliff with a slope of 85º. A study a few years ago characterized the geologic setting for this fault and first, by mapping which surfaces had been disturbed by the fault and counting the number of craters on those surfaces, they estimated the fault formed about 3.2 billion years ago. Most of the Moon’s surface today is in compression; the moon is actually shrinking ever so slightly as it cools, putting pressure on the outermost layer and forming thrust faults. This line is one of only a handful of normal faults on the Moon as they are produced during extension. To the west of Rupes Recta there is also a sinuous rille that runs nearly parallel to the fault scarp. Rilles are features thought to form through volcanic processes, either with molten rock flowing along or beneath the surface. The presence of a parallel sinuous rille caused the authors studying this feature to suggest that both were formed at about the same time when an extensional stress regime dominated this crater. The stresses in this crater allowed cracks to open and molten rock to flow upwards, in one case creating a volcanic feature and in another case creating a fault that breached the surface as a rigid feature, seen today as the Straight Wall. -JBB Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupes_Recta#/media/File:Ancient_Thebit_(LRO).png Reference: https://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/401/1/377

[quiltofstars]

Rupes Recta, “The Straight Wall,” on the Moon in Mare Nubium (”The Sea of Clouds”) // Toni Adrover

[quiltofstars]

Mare Nubium (”Sea of Clouds”, top left) and Rupes Recta (”Straight Cliff”, center) // Gerard ter Horst

[aideshou]

a tuxedo rose for sailor moon

[leisurelyscientist]

The Straight Wall on the Moon - June 2, 2017

The Straight Wall on the Moon – June 2, 2017

Rupes Recta, a linear fault line, or rille, was casting quite the shadow on June 2, 2017. This fault has a length of about 68 miles (110 kilometers). The small (11 miles wide) crater Birt lies just to the west. Tech Specs: Canon 6D, Meade 12” LX90 telescope, best 750 frames out of 1,500 frames captured. Software included AutoStakkert! V3.0.14 (x64), Backyard EOS v3 and Registax v6. Location:…

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