Rutherford

Rutherford

Lat: 10.7°N, Long: 137.0°E, Diam: 13 km, Depth: km, Rükl: (farside)

LO-I-115 M Rutherford is the small crater identified by the arrows in this low resolution scan from the LPI. The large structure in the lower right is the northwest part of the Mendeleev basin.

Images

LPOD Photo Gallery Lunar Orbiter Images

• Apollo 16's orbital close-up photographs of Rutherford
  • The typical non-circular shape of Rutherford is noticeable near the right margins of Apollo 16's orbital ITEK-panoramic frames AS16-P-4209 and AS16-P-4214.
  • Apollo 16's ITEK-frames AS16-P-4775 and AS16-P-4780 show Rutherford in a less oblique way (with more shadow on its western inner slopes)(scroll to the right).
  • A much more shadowed Rutherford was captured on Apollo 16's ITEK-frames AS16-P-4948 and AS16-P-4953 (scroll to the right).
  • On Apollo 16's orbital Fairchild-mapping/metric photographs, Rutherford was captured on frames AS16-M-0739 to 0744. Of these, Frame 0741 shows Rutherford a little bit above and to the right of the frame's centre.
  • Another series of Fairchild photographs (of Rutherford) is AS16-M-1304 to 1308. Of these, Frame 1305 shows Rutherford a little bit above the frame's centre.
    • Research orbital Apollo 16 photographs: Danny Caes

Maps

(LAC zone 66A3) LTO map USGS Digital Atlas

Description

Description: Wikipedia

Rutherford

Additional Information

• Don't confuse this Rutherford with the Rutherfurd on the rim of Clavius. This is another blunder made by the IAU! - tychocrater Jul 13, 2007
• This crater is mis-identified in Bowker and Hughes, where the anonymous crater in the upper right is circled. - Jim Mosher
• Higher resolution scans of this medium-resolution Lunar Orbiter image are not currently available on-line.

Nomenclature

• Ernest Rutherford FRS (August 30, 1871 - October 19, 1937), widely referred to as Lord Rutherford, was a New Zealand-British scientist who became known as the "father" of nuclear physics. He pioneered the orbital theory of the atom through his discovery of Rutherford scattering off the nucleus with his gold foil experiment.
• Rutherford's name was rejected in the initial naming of lunar farside features because it sounded too much like the existing name Rutherfurd (Menzel, 1971), but the IAU soon relented and decided that sound-alike names were "not unacceptable" after all (IAU Transactions XVA).
• Although Rutherford was not an astronomer, his work did greatly extend our understanding of the atomic nucleus and Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements. This seems a rather small way to commemorate so large a figure in the history of modern physics. - Jim Mosher

LPOD Articles

Bibliography

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