Super boulders

From The Moon
Jump to: navigation, search

Super boulders


Extremely large boulders or pronounced clusters of boulders, of which some of those on the moon's Near Side could be observed and photographed through powerful telescopes, during favourable circumstances (suitable angle of solar illumination, pronounced shadows, perfect seeing conditions). Each one of these super boulders (or clusters of large boulders) is detectable on the WAC mosaic of the LROC's online ACT-REACT Quick Map.

Research Danny Caes

  • LAC 29: in Giordano Bruno on the moon's far side; several boulders of diameters around 100 meter, among those a boulder with corner of 90 degrees at its north-east faced part (this boulder is located at the southwestern part of the crater's floor).


  • LAC 55: a crackled super boulder at the west-northwestern part of Glushko's rim, diameter something of 300 or 400 meter. It must be a spectacular sight for an astronaut to look around while standing at the location between the boulder (at northwest) and Glushko's immense and chaotic appearance! (stretching out at east-northeast, east, east-southeast, and southeast).



  • LAC 95: two boulders of diameters around 100 meter just south of Thebit L. The larger one of the two is detectable as a tiny white speck on the WAC mosaic of the LROC's ACT-REACT Quick Map.


  • LAC 98: there's an extremely large king-size boulder (or compact rocky hillock with very steep slopes) on the southeastern inner terrasses of Petavius B (aka Orus). The coordinates of this large chunk (diameter about half-a-kilometer!) are: LATITUDE -20.1750, LONGITUDE 57.4950. The location of that boulder is perhaps also detectable on the Hi-Res scan of Apollo 12's orbital color Hasselblad photograph of Petavius B: AS12-50-7458 . In this photograph, look for a somewhat bluish spot at the upper right part of the depicted crater's inner-rim region. When this photograph was made, no shadows were visible due to the sun's high altitude in the lunar sky. We could only rely on possible albedo and color differences.... Believe it or not, years before Apollo 12 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lunar Orbiter 4 already made a close up photograph of Petavius B (and of the super boulder!). It was captured near the upper margin of frame LOIV-053-h1 (which only shows the southern half of Petavius B, with the boulder in it).


  • LAC 126: the crackled super boulder on the southwestern part of Rutherfurd's floor (diameter boulder: about 300 meter). Rutherfurd is the pronounced crater at the southeastern part of the rim of Clavius. The coordinates of the boulder are: LATITUDE -61.6623, LONGITUDE -12.8272.


  • LAC 138: the super boulder between Schomberger and Schomberger A (diameter boulder: 300 meter and perhaps more), of which the coordinates are: LATITUDE -78.12, LONGITUDE 25.15.


  • LAC 142: the crackled boulder on the southern inner slopes of southern farside crater De Forest (diameter boulder: about 200 meters). The coordinates of this boulder are: LATITUDE -77.537 / LONGITUDE -161.86.


LROC Articles

Boulder or Crater?

Odd boulders

For the two odd boulders on the southern part of Paracelsus C, visit the lower part of the page Stratification