Today's Featured Image focuses on an 800 m crater in northern Oceanus Procellarum at 48.527°N, 285.939°E. A crater this small is normally considered a simple crater, but this crater has what looks like a terrace! Terraces are normally found in complex craters, but some simple craters do form benches. Strength differences in buried rock layers encountered during the impact are probably the cause of such benches. Zooming out and looking at the crater in context may give us a better understanding of whether this is a bench or terrace.
The context image reveals that the terrace doesn't circle the entire crater, similar to how complex craters contain multiple unconnected terraces. But the crater is also very blocky, it probably hit a cohesive layer of basalt hidden under a layer of regolith, so maybe it is a bench. Whichever hypothesis is correct, the Moon is definitely not so simple!
Explore more of the Moon in the full NAC frame!
Related Posts: Maunder's Terrace
Fresh Bench Crater in Oceanus Procellarum
Published by Drew Enns on 22 February 2012