Montes Sovietici
Contents
Montes Sovietici
(discontinued IAU name; also known informally as the Soviet Mountains)
| Lat: 5°S-19°N, Long: 111-124°E, Length: 830 km, (farside) |
Clementine UV-VIS Multispectral Mosaic: Mercator projection dynamically created by USGS lunar Web Map Service. Click here for a USGS-generated list of all currently IAU-named features with centers in this field. The series of crater rims giving the impression of a mountain chain at some sun angles runs roughly along the interlocking diagonal of bright rays extending from Giordano Bruno in the upper right to Necho (below center). The intensely dark crater at the bottom is Tsiolkovskiy. Mare Moscoviense is in the upper left and Mare Marginis (upper) and Mare Smythii (lower) on the left.
Images
Maps
(LAC zone 65D2) USGS Digital Atlas PDF
Description
Presumed mountain range on the moon's Far Side, east of crater Lobachevskiy. A bright linear feature identified as Soviet Mountains on Luna 2 farside image. Not mountains at all, simply alignment of bright crater rays. - TychoCrater
Additional Information
Nomenclature
- Named for the Soviet Union.
- One of the first maps of the moon's Far Side, printed in IAU Transactions XIB (1961), shows the presumed mountain range Montes Sovietici near the meridian of 120° East, about 5 degrees east of crater Lobachevskiy. The name was adopted in that year.
- The name was deleted in IAU Transactions XIVB (1970) when it, and three other mountain chains were "found not to be clearly identifiable."
LPOD Articles
Bibliography
E.A. Whitaker: Mapping and Naming the Moon (Cambridge, 1999).
