Mare Crisium (Latin ''crisium'', the "Sea of Crises") is a

lunar mare The lunar maria (; singular: mare ) are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth's Moon, formed by ancient asteroid impacts on the far side on the Moon that triggered volcanic activity on the opposite (near) side. They were dubbed , Latin for 'seas' ...

located in the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

's Crisium basin, just northeast of

Mare Tranquillitatis Mare Tranquillitatis (Latin ''tranquillitātis'', the Sea of Tranquillity or Sea of Tranquility; see spelling differences) is a lunar mare that sits within the Tranquillitatis basin on the Moon. It is the first location on another world to be ...

. The basin is of the Pre-Imbrian period, 4.55 to 3.85 billion years ago.

Characteristics

Mare Crisium is in diameter, and in area. It has a very flat floor, with a ring of wrinkle ridges (''dorsa'') toward its outer boundaries. These are

Dorsa Tetyaev Dorsa Tetyaev is a wrinkle ridge system at in Mare Crisium on the Moon. It is 188 km long and was named after Soviet geologist Mikhail Mikhailovich Tetyaev in 1979. References

{{moon-stub Ridges on the Moon, Tetyaev ...

Dorsum Oppel Dorsum Oppel is a wrinkle ridge at in Mare Crisium on the Moon. It is long and was named after the German paleontologist Albert Oppel in 1976.- The ridge trends north from Yerkes crater. Peirce and Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refe ...

Dorsum Termier Dorsum Termier is a wrinkle ridge at in Mare Crisium on the Moon. It is 90 km long. It was named after French geologist Pierre-Marie Termier Pierre-Marie Termier (3 July 1859 – 23 October 1930) was a French geologist. He was born in Lyon, ...

, and

Dorsa Harker Dorsa Harker is a wrinkle ridge at in Mare Crisium on the Moon. It is 213 km long and was named after Alfred Harker, an English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: ...

. The cape-like feature protruding into the southeast of the mare is Promontorium Agarum. On the western rim of the mare is the

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

Yerkes, and Lick to the southeast is similar. The crater Picard is located just to the east of Yerkes, and northwest of Picard are the craters Peirce and

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

. The

ray system A ray system comprises radial streaks of fine '' ejecta'' thrown out during the formation of an impact crater, looking somewhat like many thin spokes coming from the hub of a wheel. The rays may extend for lengths up to several times the diameter ...

of the crater

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers ...

overlie the northwestern mare.

Mare Anguis Mare Anguis (Latin ''anguis'', the "serpent sea") is a lunar mare located on the near side of the Moon, about 150 kilometers in diameter. Located within the Crisium basin, Mare Anguis is a part of the Nectarian System, meaning that it was forme ...

can be seen northeast of Mare Crisium. A mass concentration (mascon), or gravitational high, was identified in the center of Mare Crisium from Doppler tracking of the five

Lunar Orbiter The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five uncrewed lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon's surface, they provided the first photographs ...

spacecraft in 1968. The mascon was confirmed and mapped at higher resolution with later orbiters such as

Lunar Prospector ''Lunar Prospector'' was the third mission selected by NASA for full development and construction as part of the Discovery Program. At a cost of $62.8 million, the 19-month mission was designed for a low polar orbit investigation of the Moon, ...

and

GRAIL The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's Discovery Program which used high-quality gravitational field mapping of the Moon to determine its interior structure. The two small spacecraf ...

. File:Crisium basin topo.jpg, Topographic map File:Crisium basin GRAIL gravity.jpg, Gravity map based on

Names

Like most of the other maria on the Moon, Mare Crisium was named by

Giovanni Riccioli Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Society of Jesus, SJ (17 April 1598 – 25 June 1671) was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic church, Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with f ...

, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become standardized.Ewen A. Whitaker, ''Mapping and Naming the Moon'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.61. By the 17th century, Mare Crisium had acquired the name 'Caspian Sea', being labelled as such by

Thomas Harriot Thomas Harriot (; – 2 July 1621), also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator to whom the theory of refraction is attributed. Thomas Harriot was also recognized for his cont ...

Pierre Gassendi Pierre Gassendi (; also Pierre Gassend, Petrus Gassendi; 22 January 1592 – 24 October 1655) was a French philosopher, Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much t ...

and Michael Van Langren. Ewen A. Whitaker speculates that it received this name because it occupies roughly the same position on the Moon's face as does the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...

on Earth, with respect to maps of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.Ewen A. Whitaker, ''Mapping and Naming the Moon'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.7. The English astronomer William Gilbert's map of ''c''.1600 calls it 'Brittania' after

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

Observation and exploration

Mare Crisium is just visible from Earth with the naked eye as a small dark spot on the edge of the Moon's face. It is the site of the crash-landing of Soviet

Luna 15 Luna 15 was a robotic space mission of the Soviet Luna programme, that crashed into the Moon on 21 July 1969. On 21 July 1969, while Apollo 11 astronauts finished the first human moonwalk, Luna 15, a robotic Soviet spacecraft in lunar orbit at th ...

probe in 1969. A soil sample from Mare Crisium was successfully brought to Earth on 22 August 1976 by the Soviet lunar mission

Luna 24 ''Luna 24'' was a robotic probe of the Soviet Union's Luna programme. The last of the Luna series of spacecraft, the mission of the ''Luna 24'' probe was the third Soviet mission to return lunar soil samples from the Moon (the first two sampl ...

Views

File:Location of Mare Crisium.jpg, Location of Mare Crisium, as seen from the Earth File:Mare Crisium AS17-M-0913-0919-0924.jpg, These are three views of northern Mare Crisium on the Moon, taken by the mapping camera of the

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

mission in 1972, facing north-northeast from an average altitude of 118 km on Revolution 27 of the mission. At the right is the east margin of Mare Crisium, with the north tip of Promontorium Agarum visible in the foreground, and

near the central horizon. The crater Eimmart is visible in both the right and central photos as a bright patch (near the top in each). The center photo shows an obvious lack of large craters in the mare indicating a relatively young age of the basalt, and the crater Eimmart C is visible as a ring at the edge of the mare near the top center. The left photo shows the western margin of the mare, with the crater Peirce (larger) and

(smaller) in the mare, and the large crater

Cleomedes Cleomedes ( el, Κλεομήδης) was a Greek astronomer who is known chiefly for his book ''On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies'' (Κυκλικὴ θεωρία μετεώρων), also known as ''The Heavens'' ( la, Caelestia). Pla ...

near the central horizon. The rays of the crater

(further to the west, not shown) are prominent in the mare. These photos were taken within minutes of each other. The sun elevation drops from 60 degrees at right to 46 degrees at left as the Command Module ''America'' orbited the Moon. Image:Mare Crisium AS11-43-6484.jpg, Low-altitude view of southern Mare Crisium from

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, an ...

, facing northwest and showing the crater

Shapley Shapley is a surname that might refer to one of the following: * Lieutenant General Alan Shapley (1903–1973), of the U.S. Marine Corps, was a survivor the sinking of the USS Arizona in the attack on Pearl Harbor * Harlow Shapley (1885–1972), Am ...

near center at the edge of the mare, and the distal wall of the crater Greaves near the horizon.

References

External links

High resolution lunar overflight video
by Seán Doran, based on LRO data, that passes near Mare Crisium (se
album
for more); a longer version that starts over the western margin of

Mare Fecunditatis Mare Fecunditatis (Latin ''fēcunditātis'', the "Sea of Fecundity" or "Sea of Fertility") is a lunar mare in the eastern half of the visible Moon. The mare has a maximum diameter of 840 km. __NOTOC__ Description The Fecunditatis basin form ...