NASA has released a new image taken by the LRO spacecraft studying the Moon. It took photos of the mysterious dark structures, unofficially named “fences.”
“Fences” are located at the bottom of a 10-kilometer crater located on the far side of the Moon. However, their origin is not related to it. They were formed by the solidification of impact melt that was ejected from another crater, fell to the bottom and then solidified.
But where did this melt originate? Scientists have an idea about that. The mysterious deposits are located at the point-antipode of Tycho crater — that is, exactly on the opposite side of the Moon from it. Perhaps this is not accidental. Researchers concede that Tycho’s formation released so much energy that it was enough to eject the melt on the opposite side of the Moon to a point 5,400 kilometers away. The flight time of the ejected substance was calculated to be 164 minutes.
It’s worth noting that Tycho Crater has long intrigued the attention of researchers. Despite its relatively modest size (85 km) by the standards of other impact formations, it is one of the most prominent structures on the Moon, which can be easily seen even with small binoculars or a telescope.
The visibility of Tycho Crater is due to its youth. It is very bright and is surrounded by a system of characteristic rays stretching for hundreds of kilometers across the lunar surface. As the impacted material darkens over time due to micrometeorite bombardment and cosmic rays, this suggests that the crater formed relatively recently.
It is very likely that astronomers know the exact age of Tycho. In December 1972, the Apollo 17 expedition landed in an area through which one of its rays passed and then delivered to Earth a piece of debris, presumably dislodged from the crater. Subsequent isotopic analysis gave a figure of 108 million years. This suggests that Tycho was formed during the Cretaceous period, an era when the last dinosaurs still lived on Earth.
According to LROC
