Hipparchus (lower left) and adjacent Albategnius are ancient lunar impact craters. North on the Moon is to the left in this picture. Image credit: Marnix PraetHipparchus and Albategnius are a photogenic pair of ancient impact craters lying in the lunar central highlands just to the east of Mare Nubium. Hipparchus is much degraded and modified, due to multiple impacts that have occurred since its formation in the same impact that formed Mare Imbrium some three to four billion years ago. Hipparchus is 160 kilometres (100 miles) wide. Albategnius is a slightly smaller (136 kilometres) but magnificent walled-plain, its walls having huge peaks rising in places 3000-4250 metres (10-14000 feet) above the plain. Its central peak is 1200 metres (4000 feet) high. The smaller craters lying between the two are Halley (centre) and Hind (top), with Klein jutting into Albategniusʼ south-western (lower right) rim. The best time to observe and image the pair is at First and Last Quarter. This nice image was taken by Marnix Praet from Belgium with a ten-inch (250mm) Newtonian fitted with a 3x Televue barlow and a DMK21 camera.
Nearly 60 hours after its starring rôle in Friday morning’s spectacle, the crescent Moon has an attractive conjunction with planet Venus, the second brightest nighttime body, low to the west at dusk on Sunday, March 22nd.
Using data from NASA’s Lunar reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have discovered two geologically young craters — one 16 million, the other between 75 and 420 million years old — in the darkest regions of the Moon’s south pole. Such craters provide valuable information on the frequency of collisions in the solar system.
Around 3.8 billion years ago, an asteroid more than 150 miles across slammed into the Moon and created the Imbrium Basin — the right eye of the fabled Man in the Moon. New research suggests an Imbrium impactor that was two times larger in diameter and 10 times more massive than previous estimates.
