Monday 12th March 2012 - Sinuous Rille near Hedin

[Geoff]

I spotted another interesting posting by user kodemunkey in the Channels, cooling cracks, pits, domes thread which shows a very sinuous rille or rilles in the Hedin craters region, west of Oceanus Procellarum and north of crater Riccioli. The rille is quite long and crosses itself at one point - or a separate rille crosses an older rille - difficult to make out.

Here’s an overview image of the area from the ACT-REACT tool ( Latitude: 4.16  Longitude: -76.8 ) :



ACT-REACT Link

A close-up of the section of the rille where it crosses over itself, or where a separate rille crosses:


NAC: M105020513LC

A zoomed-in shot of the crossing - were these two rilles created at the same time or was one created later and overlaid on top of the previous one?

[jules]

Interesting - thanks Geoff. I'm finding it quite tricky to track the gradient of the terrain around there - to try and disentangle the rilles.

[Dynamo Duck]

My guess is that both rilles were created at the same time because theres no lines at the crossroads where they both meet. I reckon that if one had been created after the other one, there'd have been lines of debris either side of it across the path of the other one, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

What is the current thinking behind the cause of this rille? Is it a lava flow?

[placidstorm]

Man in the moon , tying shoelace 

[Dynamo Duck]

Man in the moon , tying shoelace 

LOL.

Just been looking at the photo's again and I was wondering if if its some sort of plate techtonics thats caused it. Some underground pressure has caused the surface to rise and crack in those places, which could also account for what looks like a lava flow lake to the west.

[placidstorm]

If you do a forum search ( Box on top right of page ) on "sinuous rille" you can find some good info . One of which is this Iotw also from Geoff at the beginning of the year .

http://forum.moonzoo.org/index.php?topic=813.msg13232#msg13232

And a few links here
http://forum.moonzoo.org/index.php?topic=763.msg12616#msg12616

[kodemunkey]

You should check out Promontorium Laplace, there's a rille in the area which has been partially infilled by the promontorium.

[jules]

I think these are probably rilles created by collapsed lava tubes as the surrounding terrain is dark (ie low albedo) a lot like the surface of Maria. Shame the tubes have collapsed! Would have been interesting to see how they crossed. As Dynamo Duck says - there are no tell tale signs that one crossed the other.