Oceanus Procellarum

The Oceanus Procellarum ( Latin for " Ocean of Storms" ) is a very large, irregularly shaped area on the Earth's Moon Mare, in the western part of the erdzugewandten side of the moon. He has from the earlier assumption that he looked with his waning crescent bring bad weather the name.

Oceanus Procellarum is 2,500 km across in a north-south direction and an area of ​​more than 4,000,000 km ' lunar seas " ² the largest of the. Like all Maria it was formed by volcanic activity, where lava and basaltic magma covered the area with a thick, almost flat ceiling. However, unlike most other Mary, that he was not a strike, but by over -flowing magma from other regions, after which the irregular border suggesting. The lunar crust beneath the basalt cover, therefore, forms no impact basins, but is relatively flat and without mascons.

Lie on its eastern half, many smaller " seas " and " bays ". In the northeast Oceanus Procellarum is separated from the large round of the Mare Imbrium only by a shallow junction and the "moon Carpathians", in the southeast of the Mare Nubium by Montes Riphaeus. In the south, it borders on the highlands at Mare Humorum, on the southwest by that for impact basins Grimaldi. The most prominent structures in Oceanus are - especially at full moon - are surrounded by radiation systems crater Copernicus, Kepler, and Aristarchus ( see figure at right ).

The unmanned lunar probe Surveyor 1 and 3 and 9 and Luna 13 landed in Oceanus Procellarum, as well as the Apollo 12 mission manned.