The great crater Petavius is one of the most impressive and interesting craters on our Moon. Suffer great changes of appearance as the sun is born and is altering his course in each lunation (orbit around the Land). The crater has 182 kilometers of diameter and nearly 2,1 kilometers of depth. It has the central peaks more than one kilometer of height.

The walls of Petavius are abnormally big regarding the diameter of the crater presenting a double edge in side eastern and western. The eastern wall raises nearly 11.000 feet. The crater seems oval instead of round, put on of the Land, but this is an illusion due to his proximity with eastern lunar (spring).

The right age of the impact that formed Petavius is uncertain, but the crater is considered to have been formed during geological age Imbrium of the Moon, or around 3,2-3,8 billion years behind.

One of the most prominent characteristics on Petavius is Rimae Petavius, a fracture of approximately 50 kilometers of extension, in straight line running of the central peaks the south-west wall of the crater.

This Petavius located in 25,28 ° S, 60,63 ° And, is of a class uncommonly of craters that were modified by powders-impacts processes.

Which the process that might have produced the system of fractures that cut the ground of this crater? Vulcanismo is the probable cause. There are small basalt stains in the North and in the South in the ground of the crater, which they help to cement this hypothesis. But on the contrary of other craters that were totally filled out by basalt hemorrhage, Petavius has only small stains.

Then because Petavius put an end to such an extensive fractures system?

A hypothesis is it of that the fractures took place as result of volcanic modification that lifted up the ground of the crater, this would take place if the magma interfered under the ground and it pushed the floor up.

But because Petavius was not flooded completely and because the fractures were never covered by basalt.

It is possible that Petavius was not present at the same style of eruption as at other places on the Moon. Or perhaps the magma under the crater Petavius was not liquid the enough one to flood completely the surface. Finally, it can be simply that the region of fountain of the magma was relatively small, and so only a modest quantity of basalt emerged.

Ps: This text was extracted of another text that I already published before (http://astroavani.no.comunidades.net/petavius) they put the photo be unpublished and I believe the previous photos had got a very superior resolution.

Fountain: The Astronomical Society of Palm Beachs

Lunar Pioneer / LROC

Adaptation: Avaní Soares