October 10, 2012

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Paradise From Paris

LPOD-Oct10-12.jpg
south up image by Thierry Legault, Paris, France

Superb resolution and tonal quality - Thierry Legault is back. As with yesterday's remarkable view of Petavius I am here first attracted to the smooth ponds just outside Clavius' rim. In particular, the smooth fill in an apparent old degraded crater just in the center of the south side of the rim of Clavius. This smooth area has almost no texture at this scale and not much either on the QuickMap high resolution NAC images. A few other places both outside the rim and inside it have very few superposed craters, but this is about the most pristine. The fact that different ponds have diiferent degrees of smoothness suggests that they are of different ages. Considering that Clavius is too old for this to be impact melt, the smooth spots are usually interpreted as being fluidized ejecta from the Orientale Basin. If so the ponds should all be the same age. One final, observation on a completely different topic, occurs from looking at the inner rim of Rutherfurd, the large crater cutting Clavius' southern rim. Notice a top layer of bright material that sits atop lower darker material. Is the bright layer fallback ejecta from the Rutherfurd impact?

Chuck Wood

Technical Details
Sept 8, 2012. Celestron EdgeHD 14" and Skynyx L2.2 video camera

Related Links
Rükl plate 72
Thierry's website

Yesterday's LPOD: Beyond the Rim

Tomorrow's LPOD: Fly Swat



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