Bruce (crater)

Bruce is a small lunar impact crater located in the small lunar mare Sinus Medii. It lies to the west-northwest of the irregular crater Rhaeticus, and is about 33 km to the west of the even smaller Blagg. It is named for Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American philanthropist and patroness of astronomy.^[1]

Bruce

Lunar Orbiter 4 image (White blemish is present on original image)
Coordinates	1°06′N 0°24′E / 1.1°N 0.4°E / 1.1; 0.4
Diameter	6.7 km
Depth	1.3 km
Colongitude	0° at sunrise
Eponym	Catherine W. Bruce

View facing west from Lunar Orbiter 3

Oblique view facing west with Bruce at center and Blagg below center, from Apollo 10

This feature is circular and cup-shaped, with no notable impacts overlaying the rim or interior. The interior has a generally higher albedo than the surrounding terrain, but there is a band of darker material cross the midpoint of the crater from west to east. It is surrounded by lunar mare, with a few tiny craterlets in the surface to the east.

Less than forty kilometres to the southeast is the original point of the selenographic coordinate system. From the floor of this crater the Earth always appears at the zenith. Both the Surveyor 4 and Surveyor 6 probes landed about 50 km to the southwest of Bruce.

References

1. "Bruce". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS. October 18, 2010. Retrieved 2017-06-14.

• Andersson, L. E.; Whitaker, E. A. (1982). NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature. NASA RP-1097.
• Bussey, B.; Spudis, P. (2004). The Clementine Atlas of the Moon. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81528-4.
• Cocks, Elijah E.; Cocks, Josiah C. (1995). Who's Who on the Moon: A Biographical Dictionary of Lunar Nomenclature. Tudor Publishers. ISBN 978-0-936389-27-1.
• McDowell, Jonathan (July 15, 2007). "Lunar Nomenclature". Jonathan's Space Report. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
• Menzel, D. H.; Minnaert, M.; Levin, B.; Dollfus, A.; Bell, B. (1971). "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU". Space Science Reviews. 12 (2): 136–186. Bibcode:1971SSRv...12..136M. doi:10.1007/BF00171763. S2CID 122125855.
• Moore, Patrick (2001). On the Moon. Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35469-6.
• Price, Fred W. (1988). The Moon Observer's Handbook. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33500-3.
• Rükl, Antonín (1990). Atlas of the Moon. Kalmbach Books. ISBN 978-0-913135-17-4.
• Webb, Rev. T. W. (1962). Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes (6th revised ed.). Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-20917-3.
• Whitaker, Ewen A. (1999). Mapping and Naming the Moon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62248-6.
• Wlasuk, Peter T. (2000). Observing the Moon. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-193-1.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bruce (crater).

• Bruce at The Moon Wiki