 |
|
The Sea of Crises (Mare Crisium) (Apr 18, 2003)
|
| The Sea of Crises, like all the other "seas" of the moon, is actually nothing but a large plain of risen up, cooled down lava. Eventhough its shape seems to be a circle - as an effect of perspective distortion, it actually measures 570 km from the North down to the South, and 620 km from the East to he West. In the western part of the sea you find several craters of a diameter of around 20 km, like Picard (north) or Pierce (south). Other than that, there are so-called "ghost craters", which are only visible because everything that's left of them is the ridges of their crater walls. That is because they are older craters that were once flooded by the same hot lava that created the whole lunar "sea". |