Franklin
Contents
Franklin
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Lat: 38.8°N, Long: 47.7°E, Diam: 56 km, Depth: 3.82 km, Rükl: 15 |
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Maps
(LAC zone 27C1) LAC map Geologic map
Description
Description: Elger
(IAU Directions) FRANKLIN.--A ring-plain, 33 miles in diameter, which displays a considerable departure from the circular type, as the border is in great part made up of rectilineal sections. Both the E. and N.W. wall is much terraced, and rises about 8,000 feet above the dark floor, on the S. part of which there is a long ridge. There is a bright little isolated mountain on the plain W. of the formation, and a conspicuous craterlet on the N.E. An incomplete ring, with a very attenuated border, abuts on the S. side of Franklin.
Description: Wikipedia
Additional Information
- Depth data from Kurt Fisher database
- Westfall, 2000: 3.82 km
- Viscardy, 1985: 2.7 km
- Cherrington, 1969: 3.26 km
- Dark mantle deposit on floor and rilles - one of the floor fractured craters?
- TSI = 30, CPI = 10, FI = 25; MI =65 Smith and Sanchez, 1973
Nomenclature
- According to the IAU Planetary Gazetteer, named for Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), one of the best-known Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.
- This name was introduced by Beer and Mädler. According to Whitaker (p. 211) it had previously been labeled Cepheus on Riccioli's map. Prior to Beer and Mädler, Johann Schröter had used the designation Cepheus austral. in his Plate VII.
- This feature was Catalog number 374 in Mary Blagg's Collated List, with all three authorities using the modern name. It entered the IAU nomenclature in Named Lunar Formations.
- Beer and Mädler did not identify the persons they were honoring with their new names, so the association with Benjamin Franklin, the American patriot, appears to have started with the unofficial Who's Who in the Moon. But since many of Beer and Mädler's new names honor explorers, the British polar explorer John Franklin (1786 – 1847) would seem an equally, or perhaps even more likely, attribution.
- British amateur W. R. Birt proposed using the name J. Franklin (presumably honoring the polar explorer) for a region several degrees wide around the modern Crozier (a feature he also named, and thought to honor Francis Crozier, another polar explorer who died with Franklin -- see Garfinkle, 2004). This implies Birt thought Beer and Mädler's Franklin honored someone other than the explorer.
- The British Association catalog, as printed in Webb (1873), includes both Franklin (#32) and Franklin, J. (#418).
- According to Chart 22 in the Times Atlas of the Moon, Franklin's central peak received the name Franklin Gamma.
LPOD Articles
Bibliography
- Hawke, BR, CR Coombc, LR Gaddis, PG Lucey & PD Owensby (1989) Remote sensing and geologic studies of localized dark mantle deposits on the Moon. Proc. 19th Lunar Planet. Sci. Conf., 255-268.
