Vallis Rheita

This photograph shows features along the sunset terminator in the southeastern quadrant of the Moon.

Click on image to study Vallis Rheita and nearby prominent overlapping and adjoining craters Janssen, Fabricius, & Metius. Vallis Rheita is the conspicuous gash just lower left of center inside the sunset terminator. It is a chain of craters that rips through the lunar landscape intruding on craters Young and Mallet. Vallis Snellius more northerly (bottom of the picture/south is up) is not favored in this lighting.

Janssen is the largest crater seen in this image. Crater Fabricius is interior to the rim and Metius appears tangent to both Fabricus and Janssen. On the larger image, one can see the brightened rille features, contrasting with the crater floor, forming a partial "X".

Click here for the marked up image with feature names on Southeastern lunar limb.

The Nectaris Basin and associated mare figure off the lower right corner. Crater Fracastorius is the darker, mare-colored crater on the picture's border in the lower right hand corner. Crater Piccolomini with a central peak sits south of Fracastorius, an 11:30~ish direction in the photograph (south is up). These craters help to identify the concentric rings of Nectaris Basin.


Consult the
Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon search tool at Lunar and Planetary Institute to search for these same features by name and observe pictures from the Lunar Orbiter 4 mission.


Additional references used to mark up photograph. (No affiliation with Amazon, convenience only.)

Charlie's report of our 20070928.2245 session.

Photograph taken from the top of the Great Lawn using a Nikon CoolPix 995 attached to a Takahashi FS102 refractor on the morning of 29 September 2007 at 00:31 EDT.

Chong, S. M., Albert Lim, & P. S. Ang. Photographic Atlas of the Moon. 1st Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Rukl, Antonin. Atlas of the Moon. Revised, updated edition. Sky Publishing Corp., 2004.