Monday 18th April 2011 - Great fresh white

[Geoff]

On April 12th 2011 user JFincannon posted an image of an amazing crater in the “Interesting terrain” thread on the Moon Zoo forum. The crater is on the farside and is unnamed but certainly is a wonderful sight! This is what is termed a Fresh White crater as it is relatively new and luna erosion hasn’t has enough time to darken the freshly excavated regolith (to learn more about erosion on the Moon see this thread: What causes erosion on the moon?).

The ejecta from this crater appears to have a “feathery”, 3-dimensional texture and changes from white in the centre to dark grey at the edges, graduating through much of the greyscale on the way. It’s worthwhile looking at the LROC image strip and zooming in on sections of the ejecta.

Approximate coordinates = Latitude: 34.2  Longitude: 228.25 between farside craters Charlier and Kovalevskaya.

Strip: M140765593LE	Strip: M140765593RE

Image from Science Team member astrostu showing the full ejecta blanket - image is georectified, mosaicked, and with a scale bar. North is towards the top of the image.

[astrostu]

It really is a cool crater.  And I'll note that, if you didn't know, you can click on the context image I gave Geoff and it will expand.  I rendered it at 3 m/pix scale -- there's some amazing detail in there.

[Geoff]

Thanks for that Stu, I hadn't noticed!

The detail around the crater is amazing.

[jules]

If we ever need the definitive fresh white crater I think we have it!!

[vikingjim]

Wow, that is so beautiful - thanks for posting.

[Tom128]

Incredible photograph Geoff!

[Thomas J]

A really GREAT fresh white, well done to all those involved. I think we should name it

[JFincannon]

Thanks for the interest in this interesting terrain!  I came across it while doing a manual review of potential cave sites using my automated algorithm.  It saw the absolute dark center area of the crater and thought it might be a cave.  Wrong, but a beautiful, mesmerizing crater anyway!

[HannahLvsIzzy]

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