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revans
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 790
Loc: Fitchburg, MA
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A banded crater is a crater with alternating stripes of light and dark material running around its walls (like Aristarchus under high lighting conditions) giving a spoke wheel appearance. There are probably a couple of hundred craters showing at least a hint of this on the moon.
Does anyone know if this banding has been reproduced when impact craters are created experimentally? I am interested in how the bands are created... maybe in some cases by the impact itself and in other cases by subsequent landslides??
Rick
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Rick Evans
http://www.freewebs.com/revans_01420/
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photonovore
Moonatic
Reged: 12/24/04
Posts: 2465
Loc: tacoma wa
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Landslides, Rick. Take a look herefor Chuck's explanation.
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Mardi
AR-5 ldx75 refractor, 80mm f/11 refractor, 6" eq3 RFT, ETX-70.
Whitepeak Lunar Observatory Website
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revans
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 790
Loc: Fitchburg, MA
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Mardi,
Yes, I think Chuck's explanation makes a lot of sense... especially for craters like Aristarchus. There are some other craters, though, like Dionysius where really dark banding is present and is explained as being due to the asteroid going through more than one layer of lunar material (in the case of Dionysius the other layer is a basalt). The Clementine natural color image of Dionysius is pretty impressive. I wonder also if a crater had two layers... one of anorthosite (white) and a second of norite (greyish)... if an asteroid would produce a banded crater impacting such terrain?
Rick
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Rick Evans
http://www.freewebs.com/revans_01420/
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photonovore
Moonatic
Reged: 12/24/04
Posts: 2465
Loc: tacoma wa
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Yep, an impact through a couple different layers of lava could certainly throw up some entertaining patterns! After all, just a casual look at Mare Serenitatis shows how different in albedo adjacent layers can be. Dionysius indeed seems to lie right on a borderland between light Cayley highland material and dark mare basalt as you say, so that could certainly account for some contribution to the varied albedo this crater shows-- i would think... 
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Mardi
AR-5 ldx75 refractor, 80mm f/11 refractor, 6" eq3 RFT, ETX-70.
Whitepeak Lunar Observatory Website
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