What are the Large round pits that mark the surface of the moon?

Answer 1

When Galileo first looked at the moon through his telescope

in 1609, he discovered that it was not the smooth Aristotelian

sphere as was thought. From shadows cast by the lunar features

Galileo realized that lunar mountains necessarily exceeded in

height the mountains in his native Italy. He also observed and

sketched circular depressions he called 'spots,' but did not

speculate on their origin. The idea of craters on the moon was

still so foreign to the latter part of the 17th century that

Hooke apparently felt called upon to describe them in

_Micrographia_. He depicted them as shaped 'almost like a

dish, some bigger, some less, some shallower, some deeper,

that is, they seem to be a hollow Hemisphere, incompassed with

a round rising bank, as if the substance in the middle had

been digg'd up, and thrown on either side.'

"Hooke then devised two experiments to reproduce these 'pits'

and offered two hypotheses to explain their origin. His first

experiment was to bombard a mixture of water and tobacco-pipe

clay with a 'heavy body, as a Bullet.' This 'would throw up

the mixture round the place, which for a while would make a

representation, not unlike these of the Moon.' The second

experiment involved boiling a pot of alabaster where 'the

eruption of vapours' reduced the powder 'to a kind of fluid

consistence.' Hooke noted in Observ. 60 that if he gently

removed the pot from the fire while it was boiling:

"'the Alabaster presently ceasing to boyl, the whole surface,

especially that where some of the last Bubbles have risen,

will appear all over covered with small pits, exactly shap'd

like these of the Moon, and by holding a lighted Candle in a

large dark Room, in divers positions to this surface, you may

exactly represent all the Phaenomena of these pits in the

Moon, according as they are more or less inlightned by the

Sun.'"

Answer 2

Well, some people call it the "Man on the Moon", because the pits are arranged in such a way that they look like a man, or a face, but they are really just a serious of variating craters.

Answer 3

Maria

Answer 4

craters

Answer 5

Craters

Answer 6

Craters.