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Nyidawa

Rima Hyginus

Location: ·

A 204-km crack with the pit Hyginus at its elbow — one of the Moon's few craters not born of an impact.

Type
Rille
Diameter
204 km
Position
7.6°N 6.8°E
Name approved
1961

The rille is a graben opened above a dike, a sheet of magma forced upward through the crust. As the dike drained or the magma withdrew, the ground above it collapsed along two faults, and where the collapse went furthest it left pits rather than a trough.

Those pits are the test. The craters strung along Rima Hyginus have no raised rims and no ejecta, which no impact of that size could manage; they are holes into a void beneath. Hyginus itself, at the junction of the two branches, is the largest of them and one of the few craters on the Moon that is not an impact structure at all.

Sunrise

12 hours after sunrise on Rima Hyginus

Sunset

12 hours before sunset on Rima Hyginus

Sunrise and sunset on Rima Hyginus

EventTimeLit
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: Rima Hyginus

Wikipedia: Hyginus (crater)