Sinus Estuum
| Sinus Estuum | ||
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| Sinus Aestuum, vertical view of the lunar orbit Clementine . The large crater on the top left is Eratosthenes , the white stripes belong to the radiation system of Copernicus on the left outside the picture. | ||
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| position | 12.19 ° N , 6.62 ° W | |
| diameter | 317 km | |
| See also Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature | ||
Sinus Aestuum ( Latin for Bay of Heat ) is a small, sea-like formation in the central area of the earth-facing side of the Earth's moon north of the equator. The name comes from the Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli (1598–1671) and was officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1935 .
description
The dark gray basalt surface of the solidified lava lake has an approximately circular shape with a diameter of around 290 × 250 kilometers. Its center lies at the selenographic coordinates 12 ° north and 7 ° west. In the southwest, the round lowlands continue to the lunar equator in a similar looking, somewhat larger basalt plain, which is counted as part of the same formation on some lunar maps.
The Sinus Aestuum is bounded in the northwest by the large Eratosthenes crater and in the north by the lunar Apennines . To the east are the Mare Vaporum and the Sinus Medii , to the south the mountainous region around Fra Mauro . In the west, some bumps form the transition to the Mare Insularum .
At the western edge (near Eratosthenes) the lava has flooded the former Stadius whale plain and turned it into a ghost crater . A little to the south, the soil is clearly darker in color. There is a flat lava dome near the Gambart C crater , not far from which the Surveyor 2 lunar probe hit in 1966 .
literature
- Antonín Rükl : Moon, Mars, Venus. Pocket atlas of the closest celestial bodies . Artaria-Verlag, Prague 1977, pp. 138-141