Gray spots on the moon. Lunar seas and craters. Geological history of the Moon

The sizes of the seas are from 200 to 1100 km in diameter. The seas are lowlands (for example, the Sea of Rains is located 3 km below the surrounding area) with a flat bottom, with the presence of folds and peaks of small mountain peaks filled with hardened lava. The surface of the seas is covered with a dark substance - basalt-type lava, once erupted from the bowels of the moon. At the bottom of the Grimaldi crater, near the edge of the Ocean of Storms, ilmenites, rocks containing oxygen, were found by ground methods of research. There are few craters in the seas. The largest lowland is named the Ocean of Storms. Its length is 2000 km. The marginal zones of the seas, which resemble bays, as well as dark depressions in the form of lakes, were given names corresponding to their appearance. Around the seas are ring-shaped mountain ranges. The Sea of Rains is surrounded by the Alps, the Caucasus, the Apennines, the Carpathians, the Jura. Sea of Nectar - Altai and Pyrenees mountains. The Eastern Sea is surrounded by the Cordillera and the Roca Mountains. In the seas, sometimes there are ledges - faults; the most famous ledge - Straight Wall is located in the Sea of Clouds.

On the reverse side The moons of the seas are few and small in size. There is an assumption that the sea formations on the Moon were formed as a result of only a few collisions. The craters formed as a result of impacts filled with lava and gave rise to mascons. Lava rocks are heavier than continental ones, which could cause an asymmetry in the distribution of the lunar mass, as a result of which the attraction of the Earth forever fixed the "marine" hemisphere of the Moon in the direction of our planet. The far side of the Moon is characterized by "pools" - very large ring structures with a diameter of more than 300 km. The East Sea, the Sea of Moscow and others have two annular shafts - external and internal, in a diameter ratio of 2/1. Sometimes the inner rings are badly destroyed.

Some facts about the lunar seas

Names of seas, bays, lakes and swamps on the visible side of the Moon

Russian name - Latin name

Names of the seas on the far side of the moon

Russian name - Latin name

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See what "Moon Seas" is in other dictionaries:

The name given to large, dark, nearly flat areas of the Moon's surface below its mean level. The lunar seas occupy 17% of the Moon's surface; they are covered with rocks similar to terrestrial basalts, whose age is 3 4.5 billion years ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

The name of large dark almost flat areas of the moon's surface, located below its average level. The lunar seas occupy 17% of the Moon's surface; they are covered with rocks similar to terrestrial basalts, whose age is 3 4.5 billion years. * * * LUNAR… … encyclopedic Dictionary

Plain spaces on the surface of the Moon (See Moon), having the appearance of extended dark spots ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Name large dark, almost flat areas of the Moon's surface, located below its cf. level. L. m. occupy 17% of the surface of the moon; they are covered with rocks similar to terrestrial basalts, age 3 4.5 billion years ... Natural science. encyclopedic Dictionary

Black Sea Sea is a part of the World Ocean, isolated by land or elevations of underwater relief. Some seas are part of another sea (for example, the Aegean is part of the Mediterranean). The term is also used to refer to very large ... ... Wikipedia

View of the Moon during a lunar eclipse Diagram of a lunar eclipse A lunar eclipse is an eclipse that occurs when the Moon enters the cone of shadow cast by the Earth. The diameter of the spot of the Earth's shadow at a distance of 363,000 km (the minimum distance of the Moon from the Earth) ... ... Wikipedia

lunar obelisks- 8 objects of the correct conical shape, reminiscent of the famous Cleopatra's Needle in the city of New York(USA), located on a flat area of the lunar Sea of Tranquility on an area of 165 x 225 meters. E. Moon obeliskes D. Mondobelisken … Explanatory UFO dictionary with equivalents in English and German

There was once a woman named Viovio who had a son named Ganumi. When he was still an infant, his mother became pregnant again. This spoiled her milk, and Ganumi stopped suckling. He lay hungry and dirty, his mother did not wash him and only sometimes gave him a little sago.

Shortly before the birth, a corner was curtained on her in the house, and there she gave birth. She did not throw away the mat with blood stains, and one day, when everyone had gone to work in the gardens, she put Ganumi on it and also left. Ganumi immediately jumped to his feet and shouted:

Oh, what's that red here?

And then Ganumi became a parrot from a boy. His body was covered with feathers, a beak appeared, and it became all red - like blood stains on a mat. The parrot flew up to the roof of the hut, and then flew to where Viovio was making sago and landed on a nearby sago palm. The woman thought: “I have never seen such a bird, how beautiful it is!” And the bird cried out in the language of red parrots:

Viovio, do you recognize me?

The woman threw some sago to the bird and said:

Why is this bird calling my name? The parrot flew to another tree, shed its feathers, became a boy again and said:

Didn't you recognize me? But you gave birth to me - you, not another woman. Now I will leave you. Trees will become my home, I will eat coconuts, and now they will call me red cockatoo - pyro.

Don't talk like that, said the mother, go downstairs, come back home. .

Now it's late, I can't get down, my house will be in the trees. When I was with you, you didn't care about me, and now I'll eat bananas and coconuts and laugh at people.

The red parrot flew away and landed on a sago palm that grew above the stream. Soon the girls came for water, and one of them, whose name was Gebae, saw the reflection of a parrot and thought that the bird was there, in the water. She jumped into the stream to catch it, but the bird was not there. :

Why did you jump into the water? - said another girl to her. - There is a bird, upstairs, in a tree.

The parrot flew to the girls, began to flutter over them, and they caught him. Gebe joked:.

I will take him home and hide him there, it will be our husband. She put the parrot in a basket, and when she got home, she hung the basket near where she slept. The girls lay down and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, Ganumi became a human and awakened Gebae.

Who is it? - she exclaimed.

It's me, pyro. You caught me and put me in a basket.

Gebae said to herself: “I thought it was a parrot, but it turns out to be a person!” The young man went to bed with her, and in the morning returned back to the basket. The next night, he again came to sleep with her, and Gebae became pregnant. Soon other girls began to say: "Look at Hebaya, her nipples have darkened - she must be pregnant." Everyone knew about this, and some women began to scold her, while the rest were silent. Her father and mother also learned that Gebae would have a child. They got very angry, gathered fellow villagers and went with them to kill Ganumi.

The red cockatoo flew to the sago palm, threw off its feathers and put them in the hollow of the palm leaf. People cut down the palm tree on which he was hiding with axes, but Ganumi managed to jump to another, and when they began to cut it, then to the third, and from it to the fourth. He saw his mother in the crowd above and shouted:

Viovio, where can I hide? This is where they kill me. Where is my ladder, mother?

The mother untied the rope that held her skirt and threw the end to Ganumi, but the rope was too short, and then she took out Ganumi's umbilical cord, which she saved. Ganumi shouted:

They called me pyro, mother, and now they will call me differently! Ganumi will always call me when I shine brightly. Throw me the end of the umbilical cord, mother!

The mother firmly grasped the end of the rope with the umbilical cord tied in her hand and threw him another - she wanted to pull her son from the tree and hide it in her basket. Ganumi grabbed the end of the umbilical cord and Viovio yanked it towards her with all her might. But Ganumi held on tightly to the tree, and from Viovio's jerk, it first bent towards her, and then straightened up again - with such force that Ganumi's mother was thrown into the sky, and after her Ganumi himself, holding on to the end of the umbilical cord. There Viovio caught him and put him in her basket, and in it she carries him in heaven to this day.

On the leaves and trunks of sago palms there is a white coating that looks like flour. Ganumi, when he jumped from palm tree to palm tree, smeared his face in it, and since then it has been white. When Ganumi peeks out of her mother's basket, people see a new moon; then he sticks out his face more and more. Sometimes the mother hides the basket behind her back, and then the moon is not visible at all. Mother cannot be seen, only her fingers are sometimes visible in front of Ganumi's face - these are the spots that we see on the moon.

About why Ganumi's face is white, they tell in a different way. It is said that once, when he was still small, his mother was frying sago, and he was crying and begging to be given it. Angry, she tossed him a handful, the sago covered Ganumi's face, and now there are dark spots where it got burnt.

Ganumi threw off part of the sago that stuck to his face, and it fell on palm trees and even on the ground - crumbs of this sago are still found, and if a young man eats such a crumb, all the girls will love him. For this, the crumb is sometimes placed under the boy's arm, or rubbed with it on the shell that the young man wears around his neck, or they smear it with a long feather that adorns his head - it sways back and forth and lures the girls. "Little moon" is also sometimes smeared, if they want to kill a fat dugong, a rope to which a harpoon is tied, and one of the dogs is also given if the hunter wants to drive a fat wild pig.

Everyone knows how Ganumi appeared, and sometimes lovers, having met, repeat his conversation with Gebae. "Who are you?" the girl asks. “I am a pyro,” the young man answers, “I am Ganumi.”

For many millennia, people have been watching the amazing celestial body, called the Earth's satellite - the Moon. The first astronomers noticed dark areas of various sizes on its surface, considering them to be seas and oceans. What are these spots, really?

Characteristics of the Moon as a satellite of the Earth

The Moon is the closest to the Sun and the only satellite of our planet, as well as the second clearly visible celestial body in the sky. This is the only object of astronomy that has been visited by man.

There are several hypotheses for the origin of the moon:

The destruction of the planet Phaethon, which collided with a comet while orbiting the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Part of its fragments rushed to the Sun, and one to the Earth, forming a system with a satellite.
During the destruction of Phaeton, the remaining core changed its orbit, "turning" into Venus, and the Moon is a former satellite of Phaeton, which the Earth captured into its orbit.
The moon is the preserved core of Phaethon after its destruction.

With the first telescopic observations, scientists were able to view the moon much closer. At first, they perceived the spots on its surface as water spaces similar to those on the earth. Also, through a telescope on the surface of the Earth's satellite, you can see mountain ranges and bowl-shaped depressions.

But over time, when they learned about the temperature on the Moon, reaching +120°C during the day and -160°C at night, and about the absence of an atmosphere, they realized that there could be no talk of water on the Moon. By tradition, the name "Lunar seas and oceans" has remained.

A more detailed study of the Moon began with the first landing of the Soviet Luna-2 apparatus on its surface in 1959. The subsequent Luna-3 apparatus for the first time made it possible to capture its reverse side, which remains invisible from the Earth, in the pictures. In 1966, with the help of the lunar rover, the structure of the soil was established.

On July 21, 1969, a significant event took place in the world of astronautics - the landing of a man on the moon. These heroes were the Americans Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. Although in recent years many skeptics have been talking about the falsification of this event.

The Moon is located at a great distance from the Earth by human standards - 384,467 km, which is approximately 30 diameters of the globe. In relation to our planet, the Moon has a diameter slightly larger than a quarter of the Earth, makes a complete revolution around it in an elliptical orbit in 27.32166 days.

The moon is made up of a crust, mantle and core. Its surface is covered with a mixture of dust and rocky debris formed from constant collisions with meteorites. The atmosphere of the Moon is very rarefied, which leads to a sharp fluctuation in temperatures on its surface - from -160°C to +120°C. At the same time, at a depth of 1 meter, the temperature of the rock is constant and amounts to -35°C. Due to the rarefied atmosphere, the sky on the Moon is constantly black, and not blue, as on Earth in clear weather.

Moon surface map

Observing the Moon from the Earth, even with the naked eye, one can see on it light and dark spots of various shapes and sizes. The surface is literally dotted with craters of various diameters, from a meter to hundreds of kilometers.

In the 17th century, scientists decided that the dark spots were the lunar seas and oceans, believing that there was water on the Moon, just like on Earth. Light areas were considered land. A map of the Moon's seas and craters was first drawn by the Italian scientist Giovanni Riccioli in 1651. The astronomer even gave them their own names, which are still used today. We will learn about them a little later. After the discovery by Galileo of the mountains on the moon, they began to be given names in the likeness of the Earth.

Craters are special ring mountains called cirques, they also got their names in honor of the great scientists of antiquity. After the discovery and photography by Soviet astronomers using spacecraft of the far side of the Moon, craters with the names of Russian scientists and researchers appeared on the map.

All this is plotted in detail on the lunar map of both its hemispheres, used in astronomy, because a person does not lose hope not only to land on the moon again, but also to build bases, establish a search for minerals and create a colony for a full-fledged life.

Mountain systems and craters on the moon

Craters on the Moon are the most common landform. These multiple traces of the work of meteorites and asteroids over millions of years can be seen on a clear night on a full moon without the help of optical instruments. Upon closer examination, these works of space art amaze with their originality and grandeur.

History and origin of "moon scars"

Back in 1609, the great scientist Galileo Galilei designed the world's first telescope and had the opportunity to observe the moon in multiple magnification. It was he who noticed all kinds of funnels on its surface, surrounded by "ring" mountains. He called them craters. Now let's find out why there are craters on the Moon and how they formed.

All of them basically formed after the formation of the solar system, when it was bombarded by celestial bodies left after the destruction of the planets, which rushed through it in huge numbers at crazy speed. Almost 4 billion years ago, this era ended. The earth got rid of these effects due to atmospheric influences, but the moon, devoid of an atmosphere, did not.

Astronomers' opinions about the origins of craters have been constantly changing over the centuries. Considered such theories as volcanic origin and the hypothesis of the formation of craters on the moon with the help of " space ice". A more detailed study of the lunar surface, which became available in the 20th century, nevertheless, in its overwhelming majority, proves the impact theory from the impact of a collision with meteorites.

Description of lunar craters

Galileo in his reports and writings compared lunar craters with eyes on the tails of peacocks.

The ring-shaped appearance is the most important feature of the lunar mountains. You won't find them on Earth. Outwardly, the lunar crater is a depression, around which high round shafts rise, with which the entire surface of the Moon is dotted.

Lunar craters bear some resemblance to terrestrial volcanic craters. Unlike the earthly ones, the peaks of the lunar mountains are not so sharp, they are more round in shape with an oblong shape. If you look at the crater from the sunny side, you can see that the shadow from the mountains inside the crater is greater than the shadow outside. From this we can conclude that the bottom of the crater is lower than the surface of the satellite.

The sizes of craters on the Moon can vary in diameter and depth. The diameter can be both scanty up to several meters, and huge, reaching more than one hundred kilometers.

The larger the crater, the correspondingly deeper. The depth can reach 100 m. The outer shaft of large "lunar bowls" for more than 100 km rises up to 5 km above the surface.

Of the relief features that distinguish lunar craters, the following can be distinguished:

Inner slope;
External slope;
The depth of the crater bowl itself;
System and length of rays diverging from the outer shaft;
The central peak at the bottom of the crater, which is found in large ones, is more than 25 km in diameter.

In 1978, Charles Wood developed a peculiar classification of craters on the visible side of the Moon, which differ from each other in size and appearance:

Al-Battani C - a spherical crater with a sharp shaft, up to 10 km in diameter;
Bio - the same Al-Battani C, but with a flat bottom, from 10 to 15 km;
Sozigen - an impact crater ranging in size from 15 to 25 km;
Trisnecker is a lunar crater up to 50 km in diameter, with a sharp peak in the center;
Tycho - craters with a terraced slope and a flat bottom, over 50 km.

The largest craters on the moon

The history of the study of lunar craters can be read by the names given by their explorers. As soon as Galileo discovered them with a telescope, many scientists who tried to create a map came up with their own names for them. The lunar mountains of the Caucasus, Vesuvius, the Apennines appeared ...

Names were given to craters in honor of the scientists Plato, Ptolemy, Galileo, in honor of St. Catherine. After the promulgation of the map of the reverse side by Soviet scientists, the crater named after. Tsiolkovsky, Gagarin, Korolev and others.

The largest officially listed crater is Hertzsprung. Its diameter is 591 km. It is invisible to us, as it is located on the invisible side of the moon. It is a huge crater in which smaller ones are located. Such a structure is called a multi-ring structure.

The second largest crater bears the name Grimaldi, named after the Italian physicist. Its diameter is 237 km. Crimea can be freely located inside it.

The third huge lunar crater is Ptolemy. Its width in diameter is about 180 km.

Oceans and seas on the moon

The lunar seas are also a bizarre shape of the relief of the satellite's surface in the form of huge dark spots, attracting the eyes of more than one generation of astronomers.

The concept of the sea and ocean on the moon

For the first time the seas appeared on the maps of the Moon after the invention of the telescope. Galileo Galilei, who first examined these dark spots, suggested that these were water spaces.

Since then, they began to be called seas and appeared on the maps after a detailed study of the surface of the visible part of the Moon. Even after it turned out that there is no atmosphere on the Earth’s satellite and there is no possibility of the presence of moisture, they did not fundamentally change it.

The seas on the Moon - strange dark valleys on its visible part from the Earth, are huge low-lying areas with a flat bottom, filled with magma. Billions of years ago, volcanic processes left an indelible mark on the relief of the lunar surface. Huge areas extend over distances from 200 to 1000 km across.

The seas appear dark to us because they do not reflect sunlight well. The depth from the surface of the satellite can reach 3 km, which boasts the size of the Sea of \u200b\u200bRains on the Moon.

The largest sea is called the Ocean of Storms. This lowland stretches for 2000 km.

The visible seas on the Moon are located within the ring-shaped mountain ranges, which also have their own names. The Sea of Clarity is located near the Serpent's Ridge. Its diameter is 700 km, but it is not remarkable for this. Of interest are the various colors of lava that stretch along its bottom. A large positive gravity anomaly has been detected in the Sea of Clarity.

The most famous seas, bays and lakes

Of the seas, one can distinguish such as the sea of Humidity, Abundance, Rains, Waves, Clouds, Islands, Crisis, Foam, Known. On the other side of the Moon there is the Sea of Moscow.

In addition to the only Ocean of Storms and seas, there are bays, lakes and even swamps on the Moon, which have their own official names. Let's consider the most interesting ones.

The lakes received such names as the lake of Awe, Spring, Oblivion, Tenderness, Perseverance, Hatred. Bays include Loyalty, Love, Tenderness and Good Luck. The swamps have corresponding names - Rotting, Sleep and Epidemics.

There are some facts related to the seas on the surface of the Earth's satellite:

The Sea of Tranquility on the Moon is known for being the first place where a human foot set foot. In 1969, American astronauts carried out the first landing on the moon in the history of mankind.
Raduga Bay is famous for the exploration of the Lunokhod-1 planetary rover in 1970 near it.
At the Sea of Clarity, the Soviet Lunokhod-2 conducted its surface research.
In the Sea of Plenty, the probe "Luna-16" in 1970 took lunar soil for testing and delivered it to Earth.
The Known Sea became famous for the fact that in 1964 the American Ranger-7 probe landed here, which for the first time in history took a close-up photo of the Moon's surface.

What is the moon sea - look at the video:

The seas and craters of the moon, thanks to modern research and pictures, mapped in great detail on the lunar surface. Despite this, the Earth's satellite keeps a lot of secrets and mysteries that have yet to be unraveled by man. The whole world is looking forward to sending the first colony, which will lift the veil of this amazing place in our solar system a little more.

If a person has the ability to reason, can contemplate the Sun, Moon and stars and enjoy the gifts of the earth and the sea - he is not alone and not helpless.

/Epictetus/

Since the beginning of their history, people have closely watched the moon. This only satellite of our planet to this day attracts curious glances, becoming an important element of beliefs. different peoples, their rituals, customs, signs. What the dark spots on the moon and where did they come from?

In ancient times, people believed that the landscape on the Moon is the same as on Earth, the dark spots are the seas, and the light spots are the land. However, with the development of science, it was proved that our satellite has no atmosphere, and therefore no liquid water on its surface. After a series of numerous studies and observations, scientists managed to compile detailed maps unique lunar landscape. dark spots turned out to be huge craters that were formed as a result of a collision with celestial bodies and were flooded with liquid lava. They continue to be called seas, as in ancient times.

Photographed by the Apollo 11 crew, a large lunar crater about 80 km in diameter is located on the far side of the Moon and is not visible from Earth. Astronauts collected and delivered to Earth about 20 kg of lunar rock

Craters occupy up to 40% of the entire visible lunar surface. Our satellite is always turned to the Earth with the same side, on which most of the craters are located. Only very recently, with the development of technology, man managed to look at the far side of the moon. There, in addition to the usual relief, there is a huge depression 12 km deep and 2250 km wide, the largest in the entire solar system.

closest celestial body to earth

The Moon is the largest celestial body closest to us. The distance to it is approximately 384,467 km. Appearance The moon changes in accordance with the phases, which are repeated at strictly defined intervals. People in ancient times paid attention to this, so one of the first calendars that they began to use in Everyday life, was lunar.

Particles of light from the Moon reach the Earth in 1.25 seconds. But it is the light that travels the fastest in the universe. And people, even on a space rocket, need to get to the moon for a whole week. So our eternal companion is not so close. Suffice it to say that the length of the earth's equator is 10 times less than this distance.

The lunar radius is 1737 km. This is only 1.5 times less than that of Mercury, and 4 times less than that of the Earth. The mass of the only satellite of the Earth is 80 times less than the mass of our planet, therefore all bodies on its surface are attracted 6 times weaker. If the cosmonaut who was there, even in a spacesuit, jumped, he would fly several tens of meters. Its weight with all the equipment would be no more than 20 kg.

During the day, the surface of the Moon, illuminated by the Sun, heats up to 130 ºС, and the “lunar day” lasts almost half a month. At night, the surface temperature on our satellite drops to minus 160-170 ºС. Thus, there is no need to talk about any life on the Moon.

An analysis of lunar soil samples showed that the surface of the Moon, like the surface of the Earth, was formed as a result of the solidification of basaltic melt. Therefore, the lunar seas are, most likely, frozen lakes of volcanic lava, and there has never been water in them.

Lunar seas are the largest details of the surface of the Earth's satellite. Solidified lava is characterized by a darker color than the rest of its surface. The seas are lowlands, the largest of which is called the Ocean of Storms. There are also bays, lakes and swamps. There are also seas and lakes on the far side of the Moon, but they are much smaller and smaller.

As mentioned above, the surface of the lunar seas and oceans is covered with dark matter. This is mainly dust that has settled over millions of years, but there are also outcrops of dense volcanic lava. It was once erupted in large numbers from lunar volcanoes. Therefore, on the surface of the seas there are numerous hills and even low mountains.

Dark spots, that is, craters, are the most feature lunar surface. There are also enough of them on Earth, only they are all “camouflaged” either by the waters of the ocean or by vegetation. And the Moon carefully keeps these celestial "autographs" - both ancient and relatively recent.

For many millennia, the Moon has amazed earthlings with its beauty and mystery. The greatest contribution to unraveling its mysteries was made by such great scientists as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Euler and many others.

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