Plato
Location: ·
A lava-flooded crater so dark and smooth that early astronomers took it for a lake.
The floor is basalt that flooded the crater after it formed, and it is among the darkest surfaces on the near side, with an albedo near 0.07 against roughly 0.11 for the highland rim around it. The contrast is what makes the outline so sharp regardless of the lighting.
Four craterlets of 2 km and under are scattered across that floor, and their visibility has been used as a resolution test for telescopes since the nineteenth century. Plato also accumulated more reports of transient lunar phenomena than any other feature except Aristarchus, none of them confirmed.
Sunrise
Sunset
Sunrise and sunset on Plato
| 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.
Named after
Plato, Greek philosopher (c. 428–347 BC).
Further info
Official record from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: Plato
Wikipedia: Plato (crater)