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Sunrise at the moon’s Bhabha crater

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December 4, 2019

Oblique view of wide crater, floor very black, rim and three small central hills showing white. — View larger. | Sunrise at Bhabha crater, where sunlight hasn’t yet reached the crater floor after the moon’s 2-week night. You can see the crater’s central peak rising from the shadows of dawn. Note that a portion of the eastern rim (bottom of image) is still in shadow due to highstanding terrain just outside of the scene. Image via NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/LROC.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of dawn over Bhabha crater on August 28, 2019. Bhabha, on the far side of the moon, is about 50 miles (80 km) wide. It’s named for the physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1909-1966), a nuclear physicist of India. It’s part of the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, an immense impact crater on the moon’s far side, roughly 1,600 miles (2,500 km) in diameter. China’s Chang’e 4 spacecraft landed within this basin earlier this year. Bhabha crater is important to space scientists in its own way. NASA wrote:

Its location within SPA means that the impact event exposed material that originally resided deep within the moon, but was excavated and melted by the giant SPA impact event.

Eleanor Imster

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About the Author:

Eleanor Imster has helped write and edit EarthSky since 1995. She was an integral part of the award-winning EarthSky radio series almost since it began until it ended in 2013. She and her husband live in Tennessee, where they enjoy guitar playing and singing. They have 2 grown sons.