Mare Humorum
Location: ·
The 'Sea of Moisture' — a compact lava-filled basin whose sagging shores cracked into arc-shaped rilles.
Humorum is the clearest case on the Moon of a basin deformed by the weight of its own fill. The basalt loaded the crust, which flexed: the centre sagged, compressing the surface into wrinkle ridges, while the margins were stretched and opened into concentric graben. The Rimae Hippalus arcs along the eastern edge are those graben.
The two structures are therefore not independent features but the compressional and extensional halves of one response, and their spacing constrains how thick the fill and how rigid the lithosphere were when it happened.
Sunrise
Sunset
Sunrise and sunset on Mare Humorum
| Event | Time | Lit |
|---|---|---|
| Computing… | ||
- Sunrise / Sunset: at the feature's centre (IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature).
- Lit: the illuminated fraction of the Moon's disc at that moment.
Further info
Official record from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: Mare Humorum
Wikipedia: Mare Humorum