Jeans (lunar crater)

Jeans

Lunar Orbiter 4 image
Coordinates	55.8°S 91.4°E / -55.8; 91.4
Diameter	79 km
Depth	Unknown
Colongitude	270° at sunrise
Eponym	James Jeans

Apollo 15 image

Jeans is a lunar impact crater, on the southeastern limb of the Moon, with its majority lying on the far side. A favorable libration can bring the entire crater into view, but even then the details observable from Earth are very limited as the crater is viewed rather "edge-on".

Jeans is located nearly midway between the much larger walled plain called Lyot on the near side and the crater Chamberlin on the far side. It has a heavily worn and rounded outer rim, and several impacts lie along the southern and southeastern edge and inner wall. The most prominent of these intersecting craters are Jeans G across the eastern rim. The interior floor of the main crater has been resurfaced by basaltic lava, leaving a dark level surface marked only by a few tiny craterlets.

This crater is named after English mathematician and physicist James Jeans (1877–1946).

Satellite craters

By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Jeans.

Jeans	Latitude	Longitude	Diameter
B	52.4° S	94.8° E	11 km
G	56.0° S	93.3° E	22 km
N	58.7° S	90.5° E	64 km
S	56.8° S	86.8° E	56 km
U	54.7° S	86.5° E	57 km
X	53.5° S	89.4° E	44 km
Y	51.2° S	90.5° E	17 km

References

Sources

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• Whitaker, Ewen A. (1999). Mapping and Naming the Moon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62248-6.
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