Hadley Rille
Continuing the rille theme from last week, Hadley Rille has been a bit of a forum feature this week. Forum regular kodemunkey sent me a interesting couple of NAC (Narrow Angle Camera) images he had come across while exploring a “wandering rille”. Here they are:
M104504818LE |
.. | M144612571RE |
He thought he might have spotted a volcanic vent but wasn’t sure. This turned out to be the start of the Hadley Rille-Apennine region shown here on the ACT-REACT Quick Map.
We can now check the topography of any feature we see using the new ACT-REACT line tool to produce a map of surface elevation. The “vent-like” trench kodemunkey spotted on the NAC images is Běla, an elongated crater thought to be either a collapsed magma chamber or a volcanic vent. Hadley Rille itself is thought to be a either a volcanic vent or a collapsed lava tube. There is more about the volcanic nature of the region in this LROC article Layers near Apollo 15 landing site. Using the ACT-REACT tool produced the following plot of Běla revealing a vent or tube -like “V” shaped dip in the terrain:
Newcomer to the forum Dynamo Duck asked if we could view the tracks around Hadley Rille from the Apollo 15 mission. Here is the location of the Apollo 15 landing site and a map of the various routes and tracks. Click on the images to enlarge.
From LROC article “Follow the Tracks” |
From ACT-REACT |
The latest batch of NACs taken from a lower orbit, 25-30 kilometres above the surface, show these tracks – but you need a keen eye. Here’s what you are looking for:
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
The new NACS are now available to examine! Enjoy.
Jules is a volunteer moderator on the Moon Zoo forum
Moon Zoo 
This reminds me of looking at Google Earth. Sometimes I like to look at that and try to follow where closed railway lines went. Yes, Im an anorak. 😀
Cheers. Ewan.