Lacus Aestatis (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''aestātis'', "Summer Lake") consists of two relatively small patches of smooth, interconnected

lunar mare The lunar maria (; singular: mare ) are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth's Moon, formed by ancient asteroid impacts on the far side on the Moon that triggered volcanic activity on the opposite (near) side. They were dubbed , Latin for 'seas' ...

, located near the western limb of the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

in the southwestern highlands. It was originally called ''Mare Aestatis'' but was renamed at the 1970

IAU The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach ...

convention. The selenographic

coordinate In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sign ...

s of this feature are 15.0° S, 69.0° W, and it lies within a diameter of 90 km. The lake has a combined surface area in the order of 400 km². The northwestern part of this feature is located to the east-southeast of the crater Rocca, and is contained within the rim of the satellite crater Rocca A. The other part lies to the southeast of the first, and forms an elongated, irregular patch that extends generally in a north-south direction. The southern tip lies about one crater diameter to the northwest of the flooded crater Crüger. Crater counts of this feature yield an age of 3.50 Gyr for the basalt, placing its formation in the

Imbrian The Imbrian is a lunar geologic period divided into two epochs, the Early and Late. Early Imbrian In the lunar geologic timescale, the Early Imbrian epoch occurred from 3,850 million years ago to about 3,800 million years ago. It overlaps the end ...

era.

References

External links

NASA lunar Atlas
Aestatis, Lacus Aestatis {{moon-stub