Swirl
Swirl ( German vortex, strudel ) is the name for very bright, vortex-shaped albedo formations on the surface of the moon . They have no relief and are linked to a magnetic anomaly. The structures are very rare and cannot yet be conclusively explained. There is no German name for them in the scientific literature; they are also called lunar vortices .
description
Swirls only exist on the moon and there primarily on the side facing away from the earth . Of the total of only eleven examples, the most striking object, Reiner Gamma , is on the front in the Oceanus Procellarum . The Rima Sirsalis Swirl is located on the southwestern edge of the Oceanus . In the southern highlands on the near-earth side are the Airy Swirl - between Airy Crater and the more western Parrot C - and the Descartes Swirl on the northern edge of the eponymous crater. From the back of the moon, the Marginis swirl extends from the Al-Biruni crater to the northern vicinity of the Goddard crater . The other places of appearance on the reverse are the Mare Moscoviense , the Mare Ingenii and the four areas of the craters Firsov , Gerasimovich , van de Graaff and Hopmann . The specimens on the lighter lunar highlands, such as the Marginis and especially the Descartes Swirl, stand out less well there than those within the dark mare areas.
With the exception of Reiner Gamma, all swirls are each opposite a large impact basin. This explains their predominance on the back of the moon, as the large Mare basins only occur on the front. This arrangement has led to the speculation that the swirls are the antipodal result of shock waves from the great impacts .
In contrast to the moon, the swirls have their own magnetic field . These magnetic anomalies are called MAGCON, the acronym for Magnetic Concentration ( see also: Mascon ). They could shield the lunar soil from the charged particles of the solar wind and prevent the soil material from darkening more quickly.
The theories that the Swirls are remnants of impacted cometary nuclei cannot explain their uneven distribution. In addition, the MESSENGER space probe could not detect any such structures on Mercury , although its orbit is more often crossed by comets closer to the Sun.
Web links
- Ute Kehse: The secret of the moon vortex ; on image science online
- swirl on The-Moon Wiki
- Tony Phillips: Lunar swirls ; on NASA science news
- Georgiana Kramer: Derivation of the Moon's Mineralogy, Chemistry, & Maturity from Reflected Light and the Anomaly of the Lunar Swirls . (PDF)
- Swirl albedo (LMA) ; on Flickr.com
Individual evidence
- ^ Alan Chu, Wolfgang Paech, Mario Weigand: Photographic moon atlas . Oculum-Verlag, Erlangen 2010, ISBN 978-3-938469-41-5 , pp. 24-25 and Cape. 61.
- ↑ David T. Blewett, et al .: Lunar swirls: Examining crustal magnetic anomalies and space weathering trends. (PDF)
- ↑ Airy on The-Moon Wiki
- ↑ Timothy D. Glotch, et al .: Formation of lunar swirls by magnetic field standoff of the solar wind. (PDF)