observers log
German amateur Bernd Falch-Wilken captured this remarkable view using a 12-inch schief-
spiegler telescope and an Apogee AM13 CCD camera. The complex rille system near Triesnecker
crater is well seen, as is the rille bisecting the crater Hyginus. Many lunar rilles are concentric
with basin rims, but the Rilleland features are not.
lunar notebook By Charles A. Wood
Adventures in Rilleland
B
etween Mare Tranquillitatis
and Sinus Medii is a concentra-
tion of rilles that is remarkable for
its variety and ease of viewing. In Rille-
land we find three systems, each with dif-
ferent characteristics.
The Ariadaeus Rille (named for the
small simple crater at its eastern end) is a
classic example of the flat-floored, paral-
lel-walled straight rille. It is about 220
kilometers long, 4 to 5 km wide, and
roughly 0.8 km deep. The Ariadaeus Rille
126 November 1999 Sky & Telescope
is an excellent example of a graben, like
those found on Earth. Graben form when
opposing horizontal forces pull apart with
enough strength that parallel faults form,
and the terrain between them drops.
Where the rille crosses some ruined crater
rims we can see that they also drop down
a few hundred meters.
Based on the geometry of the grabens
sloping walls, the two inward facing faults
of the Ariadaeus Rille meet at a depth of 2
to 3 km, which agrees closely with the esti-
mated thickness of the fractured and crum-
bled ejecta (called the megaregolith) that
overlie the deeper, more coherent lunar
rocks. This similarity of depths is probably
more than a coincidence since graben
faults often start at the boundaries where
rock layers of different strengths meet.
Connected to the western end of the
Ariadaeus Rille by a narrow diagonal
branch is the remarkable Hyginus Rille. It
consists of two sections, one paralleling
the nearby Ariadaeus Rille and the other
This Lunar Orbiter 4 image (frame H-90) shows the Ariadaeus Rille, which stretches from Mare
Tranquillitatis (right side of image) to Sinus Medii following the contour of the terrain it
passes through. The prominent crater at bottom right is Dionysius.
1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
W E
LICK OBSERVATORY
S
Where to Find It
aimed toward the center of the Imbrium
basin. These two segments join at the 9-
km-wide Hyginus crater. What makes the
Hyginus Rille unique is that it contains a
series of rimless collapse pits that are best
visible in the segment northwest of the
crater. It is beyond belief for even the most
rabid impact-crater advocate that the pits
in the rille are chance alignments of impact
craters; they must be of internal origin. If
so, why not the rimless Hyginus crater too?
Pete Schultz, while still a graduate stu-
dent at the University of Texas, suggested
that Hyginus may in fact be a volcanic
caldera or collapse crater. High-resolution
Lunar Orbiter photographs show the
craters flat floor contains small domes that
may be volcanic in origin. Schultz also
pointed out that Hyginus is in the center
of a 100-km-wide, 1.5-km-deep saucerlike
depression. Some volcanoes on Earth are
similarly centered on broad sags that re-
sult when subterranean magma reservoirs
empty during volcanic eruptions. But if
Hyginus formed by subsidence where are
its eruption products? One possibility is
that an irregular dark patch, seen around
the crater at full Moon, consists of volcanic
ash deposits. B. Ray Hawke of the Univer-
sity of Hawaii confirms (from spectral
measurements) that the dark material is
ash, but amounts to only quite a small
volume. Its fair to say that despite all of
our lunar exploration we still dont clearly
understand how Hyginus and the rimless
pits along its rille really formed.
The third rille group near the center of
the Moons face is the Triesnecker Rilles.
Triesnecker itself is the archetype of a
complex impact crater featuring a wreath
of slump blocks inside its bright and
steep rim. It is clearly younger than the
nearby rille features since one of them is
apparently interrupted by the crater.
The Triesnecker Rilles are an intertwined
system of mostly straight and narrow
(0.75- to 1.5-km-wide) rilles that extend
generally north to south. An intriguing
feature is the continuation of a rille south-
ward past the shallow crater Rhaeticus.
Train your telescope on it and youll see
that where the rille crosses into rough
highland material it seems to be made of
coalescing pits like parts of the Hyginus
Rille. This is a delicate feature that is dif-
ficult to observe. Understanding how it
formed is even more difficult.
Unlike the Ariadaeus Rille, the narrow
Triesnecker Rilles cant be grabens unless
the depth to the underlying coherent rock
layer is much shallower. In the 1940s geol-
ogist Josiah Spurr wrote that Triesnecker
crater was a volcanic caldera and that the
rilles were fractures formed by the uplifting
of the surrounding plain as the caldera
erupted. We are now certain that Tries-
necker is an impact crater, and it just hap-
pens to have formed on the edge of a pre-
existing rille complex. But no one has yet
explained how or why the rilles formed.
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Charles Wood is an avid Moon watcher
and a researcher specializing in planetary sci-
ence at the University of North Dakota.

English amateur Harold Hill used a 10-inch

Newtonian reflector at 286 to make this
drawing of the Triesnecker Rille system. The
rilles are easiest to see at low sun angles and
during moments of steady seeing.

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope November 1999 127