What a spectacular terminator on this night, in this place! Dramatic features from the great crater Archimedes (83 km dia.) on the left edge to the middle of Mare Serenitatis on the right. Due east (right) of Archimedes is the crater Autolycus (40 km) and above it is the crater Aristillus (55 km) with it’s wonderful hatch-work ejecta blanket that according to some extends as far as 600 km from the center of the crater. Below Autolycus and east of Archimedes is a small flat region that is Paulus Putredinis, the “Marsh of Decay”, where you can glimpse the lunar dome Putredinis 1 (above my marker) some 7km in diameter and 90 m high. There are several other domes in this area but a lower sun angle is needed to bring them out. A little east the “o” marks the landing site of Apollo 15, much easier to see with slightly higher Sun. Note the great rimae all along this northern portion of the Montes Apenninus.
North of this is a long triangular set of mountains with two medium sized craters on the north end. The mountains are my favorite on the Moon, the Montes Caucasus and the craters are Theatetus (25 km) on the left and Calippus (33 km) on the right. These mountain peaks are just the tops of what were once lofty ramparts until they were flooded by the lavas of Serenitatis. This flooding left some wonderful passes between the peaks.
Due south of these mountains is a little dusky white spot in the Mare near the bottom of the image. This is the crater Linné the focus of a controversy in the 19th century when the astronomer Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt claimed that it had changed its appearance from what was described by Beer & Madler in Der Mond earlier in the century. After decades of the controversy further observations showed that there was no change and we have since gotten reliable spacecraft observations that show it to be a sharp rimmed relatively young crater around 2km in diameter.
There is much more to explore in this area and I encourage you to do so at any phase of the Moon.
