Pythagoras

Pythagoras is a magnificent example of a lunar crater. It is 129 km in diameter and is very close to the northwest branch of the Moon and, as a consequence, appears greatly shortened to us on Earth, changing shape due to the effects of lunar libration.
The crater rim is surrounded by sloping walls that rise gently above their surroundings. The terrace appears to descend to a relatively flat floor approximately 3 miles below.
If the Moon were rotated 65° to the south, Pythagoras would replace Copernicus as the most impressive visible crater.
Aside from the obvious central mountain complex that sits at the center of the crater, the floor shows little detail until the lighting becomes oblique, at which time a large number of hills are visible which are visible in the photo to the left of the central peaks.
Surprisingly, the highest central peaks, rising about 3 km from the bottom of the floor, are higher than some of the surrounding terrain, in violation of Mädler's Rule. This rule has never been confirmed with modern data, but it seems certain. Unlike Copernicus, Pythagoras does not appear to have withheld his rays when viewed at full moon. Its greatest age was recognized during the Apollo era when it was mapped to be the same age as the ancient Imbrium lavas. One thing ancient astronomers didn't know is that the central peaks of Pythagoras, like those of Anaxagoras, Philolaus and Carpenter, contain pure anorthosite, remnants of ocean magma. Like Moretus near the south pole, Pythagoras offers an oblique view of what large fresh complex craters really look like.
If we were looking a billion years ago, when the two polar craters were cool with the rays very evident, Copernicus would still be hot with molten lava on the ground, and Tycho in this case would still be 900 million years in the future.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information