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.'"
A crater.
highlands
The large indentation on the surface of the moon areÊcalled craters. It is a circular depression in the surface of the moon and other solid body in the solar system.Ê
A round pit in the moon's surface is called a crater.
It mostly looked like a full moon most of the week. Now it is waning away.
A crater.
A gibbous moon appears as a large, round shape in the night sky, with more than half of its surface illuminated by the sun.
Craters
A crater.
highlands
The large indentation on the surface of the moon areÊcalled craters. It is a circular depression in the surface of the moon and other solid body in the solar system.Ê
A round pit in the moon's surface is called a crater.
craters
We know the moon is round because of the way its surface appears when observed from Earth. Through telescopes and spacecraft, we can see that its shape is consistent with a sphere, curved in all directions. Additionally, the way shadows move across its surface during different phases further supports its roundness.
Craters. They are caused by the surface being hit by meteorites.
Impact craters
It mostly looked like a full moon most of the week. Now it is waning away.