Catena Davy - 6th December

[michaelmorris]

Here is yet another lunar image for early December. This one is a close up of Catena Davy. From what I can tell there are three competing theories for what caused this fascinating chain of craters.

1) It's a chain of volcanic craters. Personally I don't buy this as it straddles a crater wall. Volcanic chains on Earth are caused by a tectonic plate moving over a hotspot. If Catena Davy is volcanic it would imply there was recent plate tectonics on the Moon. I don't know of any evidence of any plate tectonics ever being present on the Moon, let alone recently.

2) Catena Davy is a chain of secondary craters formed by the large Orientale impact basin located 2000 kilometers to the west.

3) Catena Davy may have been formed by the impact of a comet similar to Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which split into numerous fragments in 1992 and struck Jupiter in 1994. In this case, it may have been an encounter with Earth that disrupted the hypothetical comet.

Whilst theories 1 and 3 sound nice, I suspect that theory 2 will prove to be answer.

I've included a copy of the image with negative difference processing to highlight the craters better. I've marked all the ones I can see and I count 16.

[Doc]

Cheers Michael for posting this.

I've read up on this and those are the three probable answers. I like number 3.

A very crisp and detailed image.

[Doc]

Michael have a read of my report here.

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,35577.0.html

Another time see if you can image catena Timocharis.

According to the VMA it needs an aperture of 20" to see it.

Would love to see what it looks like as in my 16" I couldn't distinguish between a peak or crater very well.