Lunar mare

As Mare (Latin, plural Mary, "sea" ), the dark plains of the moon called that form when viewed with the naked eye, the most striking feature of the surface.

The Maria similarly formed Moon planes are also designated differently, counted, since they differ not only by the size not much of an actual Mare. These designations include:

• Oceanus ( " Ocean " ), the sole representative of the Oceanus Procellarum, named due to its very large surface
• Lacus (plural: lacus, "lake" ), smaller lava plains
• Palus (plural: Paludes, "swamp " ), not clear -cut border regions of greater levels
• Sine (plural: sine, " bay " ), more or less circular bulges in a Mare, mostly originated by flooding with partial leveling of the wall of a large crater

Distribution

Overall, Maria take 16.9% of the lunar surface, where the distribution is very uneven: On the front it take a 31.2%, on the back of only 2.6 %. The eye-catching grouping on the near side is mostly in the northern half and forms the popular so-called " moon face ".

Formation

In the early days of lunar exploration was considered the dark areas actually for seas and were therefore designated by Giovanni Riccioli as Maria.

In fact, the Maria froze lava flows in the interior of the circular basins and irregular depressions. The depression is probably caused by large impacts in the early phase of the moon. Since in this stage of development the moon coat was still liquid, their bottoms were then flooded by ascending magma. The impactor changed the local gravitational field of the moon, and are still as so-called Mascone (of English mass concentration, " mass concentrations " ) recognizable. The lower crustal thickness of erdzugewandten side of the moon, the magma spills over those heavily favored on the back. The dark Mare rocks are referred to as non-binding Lunabas. The Maria are covered by a 2-8 m thick Regolithschicht that is rich in iron and magnesium.

The age of the dark basalts is 3.1 to 3.8 billion years. The planes have only a few craters and with the exception of this, they show only very small differences in height of up to 100 meters. These surveys include the Dorsa. This is flat aufwölbenden back extend over several tens of kilometers.

Interactive Map

In addition to Maria some craters and mountain ranges are located.