Fermi
Contents
Fermi - with craters Babakin, Diderot, and Litke on its floor
| Lat: 19.3°S, Long: 122.6°E, Diam: 183 km, Depth: km, Rükl: (farside), pre-Nectarian |
left. LOI-136-M Fermi is the large crater to the left of dark-floored Tsiolkovskiy. right: LROC
Images
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- An unnamed high-albedo crater immediately west of Fermi (at 117° East/ 20° South) was photographed during the mission of Apollo 8 (frame AS8-13-2256). To detect the location of this unnamed crater, one should take a look at page 202 (LAC 101) of the Clementine Atlas of the Moon.
Research: Danny Caes
Maps
Description
Description: Wikipedia
Additional Information
Named craters on the floor of Fermi:
Babakin
Diderot
Litke (Lutke)
The so-called extraterrestrial spaceship west of Fermi
A surface formation at Latitude -18.7, Longitude 117.68 (west of Fermi) should have the extraterrestrial looks of a needle-shaped spaceship, alas... it is nothing more than a north-south running lobate scarp or elongated elevation. Nothing special or alien about it... just a common formation.
Pareidolia, clair-obscur, and trompe l'oeil effects
What the angle of solar illumination can do to a common surface formation... see Apollo 15's orbital ITEK-camera frames 9625 and 9630 of the so-called extraterrestrial spaceship (both frames are suitable for 3D viewing):
AS15-P-9625, AS15-P-9630.
See also the LRO's high resolution close ups of this elongated elevation in the Short Link.
Research: D.Caes.
Nomenclature
- Named for Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), an Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate.
- This name was assigned in the Rectified Lunar Atlas (1963) based on Earth-based photos of the libration zones. It was approved by the IAU in 1964 for crater described by Arthur as being 83 km in diameter with a center at 89.5° W/ 7.5° N.
- In preparing the list of farside names using space-based overhead photography, the IAU Working Group for Lunar Nomenclature was unable to find evidence of a significant crater at that location, and chose to delete the 1964 approval and re-assign the name to the present crater (Menzel, 1971).
- On the greyish light-blue farside map of Patrick Moore's Atlas of the Universe (edition 1970), the name "Fermi" (and also the name "Planck") was printed at its Rectified Lunar Atlas location. On that map, "Fermi" is a crater at the Moon's western limb (9° N, 90°, near craters Bohr and Sundman). Research Danny Caes.
- At the southwestern part of Fermi's rim is a crater which is provisionally labeled Sophocles on LTO 101-A3 and 101B4. The name was not approved by the IAU.
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Bibliography
