Sirsalis
Contents
Sirsalis - and Bertaud (Sirsalis A) west of it
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Lat: 12.5°S, Long: 60.4°W, Diam: 42 km, Depth: 4.73 km, Rükl: 39, Eratosthenian |
LO-IV-161H
Sirsalis is the crater with the central peak. The older 49-km crater to its left (to the west) is Sirsalis A (once called Bertaud by H.P.Wilkins and P.Moore).
Images
LPOD Photo Gallery Lunar Orbiter Images "Lunar Opossum"
Maps
(LAC zone 74D3) LAC map Geologic map
Description
Description: Elger
(IAU Directions) SIRSALIS.--The more easterly of a conspicuous pair of ring-plains about 20 miles in diameter, in the disturbed mountain region some distance S.E. of Grimaldi. It has lofty bright walls, rising to a great height above a depressed floor, on which there is a prominent central mountain. The W. border encroaches considerably on the somewhat larger companion, which is, however, scarcely a third so deep. One of the longest clefts on the visible surface runs immediately E. of this formation. Commencing at a minute crater on the N. of it, it grazes the foot of the E. glacis; then, passing a pair of small overlapping craters (resembling Sirsalis and its companion in miniature), it runs through a very rugged country to a ring-plain W. of De Vico (De Vico a), which it traverses, and, still following a southerly course, extends towards Byrgius, in the neighbourhood of which it is apparently lost at a ridge, though Schmidt and Gaudibert have traced it still farther in the same direction. It is at least 300 miles in length, and varies much in width and character, consisting in places of distinct crater-rows.
Description: Wikipedia
Additional Information
Depth data from Kurt Fisher database
- Westfall, 2000: 4.73 km
- Satellite craters Sirsalis A, K, KA and J are on the ALPO list of bright ray craters.
- Sirsalis Z mountain height measurements
Nomenclature
- Gerolamo Sersale (Sirsalis) (1584-1654) was an Italian Jesuit astronomer and selenographer. Sersale drew a fairly precise map of a full moon in July 1650. After it was drawn, the map's existence was known to other astronomers only through being mentioned in Riccioli's Almagestum novum.
- Sirsalis A (adjacent to Sirsalis itself) was called Bertaud by Wilkins and Moore, but the I.A.U. did not accept this name. Bertaud was a contemporary French astronomer.
- BERTAUD (Sirsalis A). Name detectable on the HALLWAG moonmap (called Ossolinski by Van Langren).
Contemporary French astronomer (this could be Charles Bertaud, see also asteroid 4603 Bertaud and the accompanying text on page 374 in Lutz D. Schmadel's Dictionary of Minor Planet Names: 'Named in honor of Charles Bertaud, under whose leadership at Meudon the discoverer (Christian Pollas) began his astronomical work. Well known as an observer of comets, supernovae, and particular stars, he was one of the initiators of the project that led to the construction of the Schmidt telescope at Caussols').
In several moonbooks and lunar maps this name was erroneously printed as "Bertauld".
Christian Pollas has his own asteroid: 4892 Chrispollas.
Mount Sirsalis (aka Sirsalis Beta)
- Charles Wood's name for the previously unnamed elevation north of Sirsalis, see LPOD Mount Sirsalis.
LPOD Articles
The Longest Rille A Rille Draped Across the Landscape A Long Graben Mount Sirsalis
Bibliography
- "Bertaud": MAANMONOGRAFIEEN by Harry De Meyer (1969) and Tony Dethier (1989), both of the V.V.S. (Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde).
- A Portfolio of Lunar Drawings (Harold Hill), page 144.
