This image has the distraction of Clavius (231km dia.), the large crater in the upper left corner with distinctive line of smaller craters on its floor, decreasing in size as they curve to the left. The largest one, and least round, on the Clavius crater wall at bottom is Rutherfurd (56km) with its ejecta splash spread out on the floor of Clavius to the north. Going counterclockwise on the broad rim of Clavius we come to another similar sized crater Porter (54km). These latter two are very different ages with Porter being Pre-Imbrian (3.85-4.5 billion years old) and Rutherfurd being Copernican (1.1 b.y. to present) while Clavius itself is Nectarian (3.92-3.85 b.y.) in age. This seems to be a bit contradictory as it indicates that Porter is older than the crater on whose walls it was formed! Below and adjacent to Clavius is Blancanus (109km) half filled with shadow. Moving to the right we come to a nicely circular crater with terraced walls and a central peak. This is Moretus (117km), the most identifiable crater nearest the South Pole from our vantage point. Beer & Madler considered the central peak of this “walled plain” to be “the loftiest central mountain on the entire moon.” Quite a claim and I’m not sure it is borne out with recent spacecraft measurements. Though close, Moretus, with a lunar latitude of just over 71°, is still far from the pole. However, this image was captured at an unfavorable libration for the south.
Just below Moretus is the strongly foreshortened crater Short (51km), no pun intended. Between Moretus and Clavius is the poorly defined crater Gruemberger (97km) overlain as it is with ejecta from Moretus and several of the other nearby younger craters. Cysatus (51km) is the smaller crater just to the right and on top of Gruemberger. Then going further to the right of Moretus is another fairly large crater Curtius (99km) with a very well defined crater Zach (68km) above it.
Below and left of Moretus is a large pool of dark overlapping ovals. The upper lobe of this pool is the crater Newton D that overlaps Newton (62km) to the south, which in turn overlaps another crater a little closer to the pole, Newton G. At the bottom of this pool of black, on the limb, is a bright rampart. This is the mutual wall of two craters Newton G and Newton A over our horizon and even further to the south. It is a very high plateau well shown on the USGS 1:1 million-Scale Maps of the Moon. This is as close to the pole as we can get here, still only -80°.
