Through the north-eastern plains of the Sea of ​​Tranquility, over 500 km from the Apollo 11 landing site, are two magnificent cracks and nearly parallel to the surface of the Moon, both have more than 200 km long.

Rupes and Rima Cauchy (Cauchy escarpment and rille) are so named because the bright Cauchy impact crater 14 km in diameter lying between them. Both features were formed after cooling of huge lava flows that formed the sea.

As the Earth's crust, the crust of the Moon is capable of being deformed by tension. In some lunar maria, are examples of wrinkles that have arisen as a result of the moon's crust deformation under pressure. However beyond a certain critical degree of compression or tension in rocks, a fault occurs, yielding slopes failure, grooves and rilles. Some failures can be very deep, as called Straight Wall (Rupes Recta) in Mare Nubium.

The Cauchy area is one of the most fascinating places of the Moon. It includes one of the few large lunar failures, one rille and near a high concentration of domes.

In the attached photo I counted more than 20 domes distributed in four large groups indicated by yellow circles.

Some of the hemispheric summits are capped, others have a classic center well, most, like Cauchy Omega on the far right - has flattened summits, and Cauchy Tau (left of Omega) has an uneven surface, with a small peak.

Rupes Cauchy is partly rille partly bluff, and it seems a little more complicated than clean escarpment Rupes Recta or cutting chisel rille Rima Cauchy. Rupes Cauchy begins in the west in a couple of small oval craterlets (visible in a reflector of 150 mm or greater) and several larger craters lie along its length. Rupes Cauchy extends eastward to meet with the border of the Sea of ​​Tranquility where there jagged mountains, and there is no evidence that it crosses the mountains to meet with the little ruined crater Lawrence.

Because so many craters lie along the Rupes Cauchy?

Many of the moon rilles seem compound (at least in part) by craterlets or chains of elongated craters. In some cases the original faulting may have instigated fresh attacks of volcanic activity that produced small volcanic vents along the fissure. There is or there was certainly a good deal of volcanic activity in the region, many are volcanic domes as already mentioned above.

The Cauchy crater is easily visible in binoculars as a bright spot in high illuminations. Rupes and RIMA Cauchy along with the next two domes are visible on a refractor 60 mm when they are positioned near the terminator at low angles of illumination. At sunrise lunar sun Rupes Cauchy (as Rupes Recta) casts a dark shadow over the plains to the east. At sunset the resource appears as a bright line. The Cauchy Omega summit will require at least one reflector 150mm high magnification in good viewing conditions. This fascinating region has much to show us, just know what to look!

Source: LPOD / Charles Wood

Moonwatch / Peter Greek

Adaptation and completion: Avani Soares