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Descartes

LRO WAC mosaic
Coordinates	11°42′S 15°42′E / 11.7°S 15.7°E / -11.7; 15.7
Diameter	48 km
Depth	0.9 km
Colongitude	344° at sunrise
Eponym	René Descartes

Descartes is a heavily worn lunar impact crater that is located in the rugged south-central highlands of the Moon. To the southwest is the crater Abulfeda. It is named after the French philosopher, mathematician and physicist René Descartes.

The rim of Descartes survives only in stretches, and is completely missing in the north. The crater Descartes A lies across the southwest rim. The interior floor contains several curved ridges. These are concentric with the surviving outer walls to the northwest and southeast.

A section of the outer rim of Descartes is covered by a region that has a higher albedo than the surrounding surface. Low-altitude measurements by the Lunar Prospector showed that this patch is actually a magnetic anomaly—the strongest on the near side of the Moon. This magnetic field may be deflecting particles from the solar wind, and thus preventing the underlying surface from growing darker because of space weathering. This is similar to the process causing Reiner Gamma and other bright swirls such as those of Mare Marginis and Mare Ingenii.

About 50 kilometers to the north of this crater was the landing site of Apollo 16. The uneven region about the landing area is sometimes called the Descartes Highlands or the Descartes Mountains.

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 Descartes.

• Descartes A crater

References

1. "Descartes (crater)". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology Research Program.

• Andersson, L. E.; Whitaker, E. A. (1982). NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature. NASA RP-1097.
• Bussey, B.; Spudis, P. (2004). The Clementine Atlas of the Moon. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81528-4.
• Cocks, Elijah E.; Cocks, Josiah C. (1995). Who's Who on the Moon: A Biographical Dictionary of Lunar Nomenclature. Tudor Publishers. ISBN 978-0-936389-27-1.
• McDowell, Jonathan (July 15, 2007). "Lunar Nomenclature". Jonathan's Space Report. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
• Menzel, D. H.; Minnaert, M.; Levin, B.; Dollfus, A.; Bell, B. (1971). "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU". Space Science Reviews. 12 (2): 136–186. Bibcode:1971SSRv...12..136M. doi:10.1007/BF00171763. S2CID 122125855.
• Moore, Patrick (2001). On the Moon. Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35469-6.
• Price, Fred W. (1988). The Moon Observer's Handbook. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33500-3.
• Rükl, Antonín (1990). Atlas of the Moon. Kalmbach Books. ISBN 978-0-913135-17-4.
• Webb, Rev. T. W. (1962). Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes (6th revised ed.). Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-20917-3.
• Whitaker, Ewen A. (1999). Mapping and Naming the Moon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62248-6.
• Wlasuk, Peter T. (2000). Observing the Moon. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-193-1.

External links

• Media related to Descartes (crater) at Wikimedia Commons
• Descartes at The Moon Wiki
• Wood, Chuck (March 1, 2006). "Styll Mysterious After These Years". Lunar Photo of the Day. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011.
• Wood, Chuck (May 31, 2007). "A New Swirl". Lunar Photo of the Day. Retrieved 2017-01-29.

v t e Craters on the Moon: C–F
C	C. Herschel C. Mayer Cabannes Cabeus Cailleux Cai Lun Cajal Cajori Calippus Cameron Campanus Campbell Cannizzaro Cannon Cantor Capella Capuanus Cardanus Carlini Carlos Carmichael Carnot Carol Carpenter Carrel Carrillo Carrington Cartan Carver Casatus Cassegrain Cassini Catalán Catharina Cauchy Cavalerius Cavendish Caventou Cayley Celsius Censorinus Cepheus Chacornac Chadwick Chaffee Challis Chalonge Chamberlin Champollion Chandler Chang Heng Chang-Ngo Chant Chaplygin Chapman Chappe Chappell Charles Charlier Chaucer Chauvenet Chawla Chebyshev Chernyshev Chevallier Ching-Te Chladni Chrétien Cichus Clairaut Clark Clausius Clavius Cleomedes Cleostratus Clerke Coblentz Cockcroft Collins Colombo Compton Comrie Comstock Condon Condorcet Congreve Conon Cook Cooper Copernicus Cori Coriolis Couder Coulomb Courtney Cremona Crile Crocco Crommelin Crookes Crozier Crüger Ctesibius Curie Curtis Curtius Cusanus Cuvier Cyrano Cyrillus Cysatus
D	D. Brown da Vinci Daedalus Dag Daguerre Dale d'Alembert Dalton Daly Damoiseau Dandelion Daniell Danjon Dante Darney D'Arrest D'Arsonval Darwin Das Daubrée Davisson Davy Dawes Dawson De Forest de Gasparis de Gerlache De La Rue De Moraes De Morgan De Roy De Sitter De Vico De Vries Debes Debus Debye Dechen Delambre Delaunay Delia Delisle Dellinger Delmotte Delporte Deluc Dembowski Democritus Demonax Denning Desargues Descartes Deseilligny Deslandres Deutsch Dewar Diana Diderot Dionysius Diophantus Dirichlet Dobrovolʹskiy Doerfel Dollond Donati Donna Donner Doppelmayer Doppler Douglass Dove Draper Drebbel Dreyer Drude Dryden Drygalski Dubyago Dufay Dugan Dunér Dunthorne Dyson Dziewulski
E	Eckert Eddington Edison Edith Egede Ehrlich Eichstadt Eijkman Eimmart Einstein Einthoven Elger Ellerman Ellison Elmer Elvey Emden Encke Endymion Engelʹgardt Eötvös Epigenes Epimenides Eratosthenes Erlanger Erro Esclangon Esnault-Pelterie Espin Euclides Euctemon Eudoxus Euler Evans Evdokimov Evershed Ewen
F	Fabbroni Fabricius Fabry Fahrenheit Fairouz Faraday Faustini Fauth Faye Fechner Fedorov Felix Fényi Feoktistov Fermat Fermi Fernelius Fersman Fesenkov Feuillée Fibiger Finsch Finsen Firmicus Firsov Fischer Fitzgerald Fizeau Flammarion Flamsteed Fleming Florensky Florey Focas Fontana Fontenelle Foster Foucault Fourier Fowler Fox Fra Mauro Fracastorius Franck Franklin Franz Fraunhofer Fredholm Freud Freundlich Fridman Froelich Frost Fryxell Furnerius

• LQ20 quadrangle
• Impact craters on the Moon
• René Descartes