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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Chain of Elliptical Craters on the Moon (wide & detail)

Chain of Elliptical Craters on the Moon (wide & detail)
Chain of Elliptical Craters on the Moon (wide & detail) Contiguous elliptical craters form a discontinuous rille. This is a small segment of an LROC observation made on July 17, 2009, less than a month after its launch. At the time, the spacecraft was in its preliminary orbit, higher above the lunar surface than its planned science orbit, so at its full resolution LROC got 1.55 meters per pixel on the surface here, about three times poorer than its eventual science images. This context image has been downsampled to 10 meters per pixel. NASA / GSFC / ASU

Here is a view of the same area from Lunar Orbiter:

Discontinuous rille on the Moon
Discontinuous rille on the Moon Contiguous elliptical craters form a discontinuous rille. From Lunar Orbiter Photograph V-182M. (Figure VIII-6 in Thomas A. Mutch's Geology of the Moon.)Image: NASA

And here is a full-resolution detail view from the LROC image.

Discontinuous rille on the Moon (full resolution from LROC)
Discontinuous rille on the Moon (full resolution from LROC) Image: NASA / GSFC / ASU