Lunar Volcanoes

Lunar Volcanoes

(glossary entry)

Description

Additional Information

• Many of the volcanoes on this list are small craters surrounded by what is interpreted as dark pyroclastic material.
• The distinction, or dividing line, between lunar volcanoes and domes (of which there are much more extensive lists) seems to be vague; many domes being described as being analogous to shield volcanoes on Earth. - Jim Mosher
• This list does include multiple types of lunar volcanoes. The three with designations in the GLR column are volcanic domes, the rest are generally other types of volcanoes, including dark halo craters and steep-sided cones. Generally, it is easy to distinguish between domes and other types of lunar volcanoes. - tychocrater Jun 26, 2008

Dimensions of Lunar Volcanoes

In 1981 Dick Pike and Gary Clow published a paper, Revised Classification of Terrestrial Volcanoes and Catalog of Topographic Dimensions, With New Results on Edifice Volume (US Geological Survey Open-File Report 81-1038). Because Pike was also interested in volcanoes on other planets he included measurements for 18 possible lunar and 15 martian volcanoes. Here are the lunar data. Dimensions were measured from Lunar Orbiter IV and Apollo images and Lunar Topographic Orthophotomosaics.
Note: There are many more lunar volcanoes than on this list - these are just the ones whose dimensions could be measured on high resolution images or maps. There is no list of all lunar volcanoes - even though it would include only 150-200 items.
- tychocrater Sep 8, 2007

Name	Latitude	Longitude	Crater Diameter	Crater Depth	Volcano Height	Volcano Diameter	Circularity	Class	IAU Name	GLR Name
Aristarchus-1	33.9N	54.3W	1865	195	145	3175	.29	LC	-	-
Aristarchus-2	33.9N	54.4W	1505	135	115	2555	.41	LC	-	-
Lassell HJ	15.0S	10.8W	1500	240	175	2550	.80	LC	-	-
Serenitatis-1	18.6N	27.6E	925	60	72	2325	.53	LC	Osiris	-
Serenitatis-2	18.9N	27.5E	635	30	60	1735	.55	LC	Isis	-
Alphonsus R	14.4S	1.9W	2700	380	60	7700	.35	LH	Alphonsus R	-
Alphonsus KC	12.9S	358.4E	2550	376	50	6000	.58	LH	Soraya	-
Alphonsus CA	13.6S	4.1W	2350	325	30	6350	.70	LH	-	-
Alphonsus MD	12.5S	358.1E	2250	336	50	4000	.64	LH	Ravi	-
South of Alphonsus CA	13.7S	4.2W	2220	325	40	7420	.42	LH	-	-
Alphonsus +	12.6S	358.3E	1725	212	15	3525	.47	LH	Monira	-
West of Alphonsus CA	13.5S	4.2W	1720	200	30	4720	.47	LH	-	-
On rima Alphonsus II	13.8S	3.4W	1350	165	10	2350	.59	LH	-	-
D-Crater (Ina)	18.7N	5.3E	2650	50	200	15000	.54	LD	Ina	-
Maraldi D 2NW	14.3N	35.7E	1700	185	90	8500	.49	LD	Diana	Maraldi 14; also Vitruvius 1 (?)
Cauchy Omega	7.2N	38.3E	1775	231	116	12301	.51	LD	Donna	Cauchy 1
Maraldi B 1SE	14.2N	35.9E	1600	70	130	8400	.45	LD	Grace	Maraldi 17
Rima Aristarchus 8	30.5N	49.2W	1275	25	65	5745	.30	LD	-	-

Crater Diameter is the diameter of the summit crater. Crater Depth is the depth of the crater. Height is the height of the entire volcano above its surroundings. Volcano Diameter is the diameter of the base of the volcano (all measurements in meters). Circularity is a measure of the crater's circularity - area of an inscribed circle divided by the area of circumscribed circle; 1 - perfect circle. Class: LC - cratered raised cone; LH - dark-halo crater; LD - cratered dome

(Note that the typical "circularity" value of 0.5 means that Pike and Clow saw most of these volcanoes as having quite elliptical shapes -- with about a 2::1 aspect ratio -- presumably in overhead views. - Jim Mosher)

The following corrections to the original form have been made (- Jim Mosher):

1. Add IAU Name where a feature at the same position is currently named in the IAU nomenclature. In general, the IAU names refer to the summit crater only.
2. Add GLR Name from 2005 GLR Dome Catalog, where a named feature appears at the same position.
3. Supply coordinates for closely-spaced Aristarchus-1/2 raised crater pair. Original was: ~34N / ~55W for both.
4. Supply IAU coordinates for Alphonsus R (none were given).
5. Make likely identification of "Alphonsus CA" and "South of" and "West of" as dark-haloed craters near west rim of Alphonsus (no coordinates were given).
6. Make likely identification of the volcano listed as "On rima Alphonsus II". Although this one is not on the "Rima Alphonsus II" of the System of Lunar Craters it is the most striking of the dark-haloed craters on the floor of Alphonsus not otherwise listed here. But if “on Rima Alphonsus II” is a misprint for “Rima Alphonsus I”, then Pike and Clow might instead mean the also unnamed, but less striking, dark haloed crater on a branch of the latter at about 13.5S/1.5W (roughly midway, in latitude, between Soraya and Alphonsus R).
7. Correct latitude of "Cauchy Omega" from 6.2N to 7.2N
8. Correct longitude of "Rima Aristarchus 8" from 49.2E to 49.2W

Farouk El-Baz's Lunar Ellipse of Fire

It appeared in the june 1973 issue of Sky and Telescope; an article by Farouk El-Baz about his Lunar Ellipse of Fire, which was some sort of equatorial ellipse on the moon's Near Side, containing regions of dark mantle ejecta, large blobs, halos around low rimmed craters, and small patches around domed hills. There were twelve special locations in this ellipse:
  1: Littrow.
  2: Sulpicius Gallus.
  3: Sinus Fidei.
  4: Rimae Bode.
  5: Copernicus C and D.
  6: Fra Mauro.
  7: Alphonsus's floor.
  8: Theophilus's rim.
  9: Langrenus C (Acosta).
  10. Peirce + Picard.
  11. Western part of Mare Crisium's rim.
  12. Macrobius A (Carmichael).
 
 

Gaseous protuberances at the moon's polar limb areas?

Many of the ancient lunar observers noticed something which looked like some sort of gaseous protuberances at the moon's polar limb areas. What could have been these odd appearances? Traces of some sort of weak internal activity? Some sort of equivalent of the geyser-like gaseous plumes detected by interplanetary probes at several moons of the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn? Is the same sort of phenomenon also noticeable at our own moon? Could we say that the moons in our solar system are more-or-less like giant comet nuclei? (appearances of gas and dust plumes).
 - DannyCaes Nov 5, 2016
 
 

Bibliography

Originally published at Chuck Wood's Moon in 2004.
  Leonardi, Piero: Volcanoes and Impact Craters on the Moon and Mars.
 

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