Lunar Crater Origin in the Maria from Analysis of Orbiter Photographs

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Scientific paper

One third of a million counts on 73 127 craters in 22 test areas of lunabase (the dark areas of the Moon, normally maria) have been made with the aim of diagnosing the origin of the craters that are predominantly between 100 and 2000 m in diameter by the use of a statistical method that is capable of measuring both the chaining and clustering of craters. Independent measurements of clustering have been made using photometry and using equi-areal counts to determine the number density of craters. It is argued that craters with alined centres that trend in parallel directions over vast distances are exclusively of internal origin. Strong evidence that a high proportion of the chains are of tectonic origin is found. Other criteria, such as a systematic change in the number density of craters over a test area or an excess of craters on a recent lava flow, are also used to argue for endogenic craters. Computer simulations of random fields of craters and of specially proportioned linear arrays and clusters of craters on random backgrounds have been used widely in the interpretation of the observations. By comparing the results of statistical tests on the real distributions of crater centres with those on the distributions created by computer it has been possible to set probable limits on the number of endogenic craters in each test area. Because the method is statistical, results for individual areas will embody unknown errors. Averages, taking several areas at a time, are more meaningful. Using all the data together, we find that at least 33%, but not more than 51%, of the craters sampled are of endogenic origin. It is shown that the flux of meteoroids has not necessarily varied for the past few thousand million years.

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