Mare Orientale

"Oriental Sea" redirects here. For other uses, see East Sea (disambiguation).

Mare Orientale

200px Close-up view of Mare Orientale
Coordinates
Diameter	327 km (203 mi)
Eponym	Eastern Sea

Mare Orientale ("eastern sea" in Latin) is a lunar mare. It is located on the western border of the Moon's nearside and is difficult to see from an Earthbound perspective. Images from spacecraft have revealed it to be one of the most striking large scale lunar features, resembling a target ring bullseye.

Geology

During the 1960s, rectified images of Mare Orientale by Gerard Kuiper at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory gave rise to the notion of it being an impact crater. The mare is about 900 kilometres (560 mi) across and was formed by the impact of an asteroid-sized object. Compared with most other lunar basins, Mare Orientale is less flooded by mare basalts, so that a lot of the basin structure is visible. The basalt in the central portion of Mare Orientale is probably less than 1 km (0.62 mi) in thickness which is much less than mare basins on the earth-facing side of the moon. The collision caused ripples in the lunar crust, resulting in the three concentric circular features. The innermost rings of this vast, multi-ringed crater are the inner and outer Montes Rook, and the outermost ring are the Montes Cordillera, 930 km (580 mi) in diameter. Outward from here, ejecta extend some 500 km (310 mi) from the foot of the mountains and form a rough surface with hummocks and with features radially aligned towards the center.

The Apollo program did not sample rocks from Mare Orientale so its precise age is not known. However, it is the Moon's most recent impact basin, probably rather younger than the Imbrium Basin, which is about 3.85 billion years old. The surrounding basin material is of the Lower Imbrian epoch with the mare material being of the Upper Imbrian epoch.

Located at the antipode of Mare Orientale is Mare Marginis.

Discovery and name

Mare Orientale is difficult to observe from Earth, as it lies at the extreme western edge of the near side. All that can be seen are the rough mountain ranges—the Montes Rook and the Montes Cordillera—and some glimpses of the dark mare material beyond them. However, the Moon's libration means that on rare occasions Mare Orientale is turned slightly more toward the Earth, and becomes a little more discernible.

Although various astronomers had observed hints of the mare, it was first fully described by the German astronomer Julius Franz in his 1906 book Der Mond ("The Moon"). Franz also gave the mare its name. At the time, it was located on what by convention was considered the eastern side of the Moon, hence Franz named it the "Eastern Sea". This paradox is known from the reversed moon images which were seen on the astronomer telescopes lenses for many years. In 1961, however, the International Astronomical Union adopted the astronautic convention for East and West on the Moon and this limb became the western edge.

The first detailed study of the Mare Orientale was by Hugh Percy Wilkins, who called it "Lunar Mare X". Franz's discoveries were not well known, and in the 1976 edition of his book Guide to the Moon, Patrick Moore claims that he and Wilkins discovered and named Mare Orientale in 1946. However, Moore credits Franz as discoverer in his 2009 Yearbook of Astronomy (p. 133-135).

Gallery

• MareOrientale lunarOrbiter4 c1.jpg

  1967 photograph by Lunar Orbiter 4

• Orientale lro.jpg

  2010 photograph by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

• Mare Orientale location marked in cropped image of full moon.svg

  Photograph from Earth at full moon with Mare Orientale marked on the limb

• Mare-Orientale-Artifacts Lat-28 Long-96.jpg

  Dome-shaped hills at the southern edge of Mare Orientale Basin, possibly formed by lava flows.