The wikispaces project THE MOON now includes more than 2200 named features, all accessible from the alphabetical index in the menu to the left. Sometimes, however, I want to find - and I assume you might too - entries for a specific class of feature, such as rilles, mare ridges, impact basins or other features. This page is our shortcut to such interesting features. You may find other types of features by using the search function, too. There could be other lists - craters with central peaks, for example - that are too hard to make. If there is a special features list you'd like (floor-fractured craters, dark halo craters, wrinkle ridges, etc), please consider making it and then sharing it here. Happy exploring!

Surface Features

- Banded craters (and streamers).
- Basins (the moon's largest "craters", those on the near side are already visible through small binoculars!).

• For small basins, large and small craters, and suspected basins and craters, see the System of Lunar Craters (SLC, 1966).

- Bay-shaped incomplete craters (and handcuffs).
- Boulder Tracks (there are MANY of them on the moon!!!) (the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's cameras captured millions of those!).
- Caes Catalog (unique and odd lunar surface formations, observable through common and powerful telescopes).
- Catenae - crater chains (this kind of odd formation is the most suitable source to explain the existence of "broken" comets such as the legendary comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which impacted on Jupiter as a string of mini cometary bodies).
- Chevron shaped chains of small depressions (some of them are sort of "S" shaped).
- Clusters of high-albedo boulders on wrinkle ridges (fields of "white rocks", very much like lunar labyrinths).
- Colored regions (telescopic observations by dedicated moon-observers, and orbital investigations by unmanned orbiters and Apollo astronauts).
- Colored regions - Part 2 (possible hypotheses on the moon's colorations, and the perception of colors).
- Colored regions - Part 3 (the subtle colors of the moon's boulders, rocks, and regolith, as seen and photographed by the Apollo astronauts)(the lower part of this page has a survey of spectral-colored diffraction effects and catadioptric phenomena in Apollo's Hasselblad photographs).
- Concentric Craters (bowl-shaped craters with "double rim", "small crater inside larger crater").
- Cryptomaria - hidden maria
- Curious crater clusters (remarkable because of their recognizable shapes) (lunar surface pareidolia).
- Dark halo craterlets (DHC, and other low-albedo spots).
- Domes (see also page Tholus).
- Dorsa - mare ridges (catalog of officially named wrinkle ridges, and also a much larger catalog of unofficially named wrinkle ridges outside the LTO regions).
- Floor Fractured Craters (this page, updated since august 2014, contains new lists full of recently discovered FFCs).
- Fossae (long, narrow depressions) (see page Rilles).
- Fragmented Impact Melt (and arc-shaped parallel crevasses) (the crackled appearance of certain small regions, looking very much like pre-spaceflight illustrations of the "typical" lunar surface).
- Ghost craters (rather difficult to detect craters or remains of ancient craters, only observable after local sunrise or before local sunset).
- Graben (this page is related to the RDR Products list on the LROC site).
- Handcuffs (see page Bay-shaped incomplete craters).
- High-Albedo inner slopes (of bowl shaped craters on the moon's near side). The possible visibility of shadowed (yet vaguely illuminated) inner slopes of craterlets, perhaps observable through powerful telescopes.
- Highland Ponds (west-southwest of farside crater Chandler) (this page is related to the RDR Products list on the LROC site).
- Impact Melt Craters
- Impact Melt Lobes (coagulated features which really show the existence of fluid or semi-fluid substances in a distant past of the lunar surface).
- Intestine shaped formations (twisted sections of sinuous rilles, looking like curved snakes).
- Irregular Mare Patches (IMPs) (new evidence for young lunar volcanism?) (plus additional catalog of IMPs and possible kipuka-like formations, by Danny Caes).
- Lacus - lakes (and other unnamed dark regions).
- Landing-crash site images from LRO
- Landing Sites (unmanned and manned missions).
- Lava tubes (or: possible lava tubes, see page Skylights).
- Limb/ Libration-related features (see page Limb for an extensive list of Limb/ Libration-related LPODs, arranged in a "clockwise" fashion).
- Lobate Scarps (this page is related to the RDR Products list on the LROC site).
- Maria - seas (the low-albedo regions which are easily observable through binoculars and small telescopes).
- Mensae (table-mountain like elevations, low flat-topped prominences with somewhat cliff-like edges).
- Mountains (mountain ranges and clusters of hills and hillocks, solitary peaks).
- Mushies (not quite categorizable crater-like formations without real floor or inner slopes, they look more-or-less like disc shaped blobs of custard, porridge, or quark). See also page Topsy-Turvy dimple craterlets, looking like small domes.
- Natural Bridges (see section LROC-articles in page Skylights).
- Oblique Impact Craters
- Palus (marsh / swamp)
- Partially Buried Craters ("half" craters).
- Permanently shadowed regions at and around the northpole and southpole
- Planitia (see also page Planum).
- Promontoria (cape)
- Pronounced Central Peaks (such as the "Egg-in-a-Nest" of nearside crater Alpetragius).
- Pyroclastics
- Ray craters (and other high-albedo spots, BHC; Bright Halo Craterlets).
- Rays (an additional experimental page to try to create a list of major high albedo ejecta-rays around pronounced impact craters such as Tycho).
- Rilles (Rima / Rimae) (+ unofficially named rilles and systems of rilles in craters and basins on the moon's farside).
- Rough looking hills on smooth Mare regions (typical example: Mons Moro in Mare Cognitum).
- Rupes - faults (and lobate scarps).
- Shallow bowl shaped craters (typical example: Finsch in Mare Serenitatis).
- Sinuous rilles (catalog of sinuous rilles compiled by Debra M. Hurwitz, James W. Head, David A. Kring).
- Sinus (bay)
- Skylights (mysterious holes, nothing like common bowl shaped craters).
- Slightly elevated oblong craterlets (some of them appearing near or at the ends of erratic looking sinuous rilles).
- Stratification (Dutch: Gelaagdheid).
- Super boulders (boulders which could be observed through powerful telescopes, and eventually photographed during favourable circumstances).
- Topsy-Turvy dimple craterlets, looking like small domes
- Swirls (high-albedo formations such as the enigmatic Reiner Gamma formation in Oceanus Procellarum).
- Terrae (Riccioli's discontinued nomenclature of his Terrae regions).
- Twin craters
- Vallis - valleys
- Veins (unique "upside-down" rilles, very thin ridges, looking like veins or vessels).
- Vents (specifically vee-floored elongated vents such as the source of the dark ring south of Mare Orientale).
- Volcanoes (and possible observations of gaseous protuberances at or near the moon's polar limb areas).

Philosophical questions, thoughts, possible discoveries, etcetera... all related to earth's moon

Why, oh why, should the manned lunar landings of Project Apollo have been fake? (why can't 99.9 percent of the human population comprehend the existence of a grand technological project such as this one?).
Weird questions (a page full of odd thoughts and... weird questions) (all of them more-or-less moon related).
The partially visible rim of an unexpected basin, or just an arc-shaped arrangement of several low-albedo spots? (southwest of Mare Humorum).
The possible swirl field east of Schroter (and how to detect it on the Act-React Quick Map).
A B C shaped features

LROC related pages (LROC = Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera)

The LROC notebook (the first part of Danny Caes's numbered list of the many articles (posts) on the LROC site) (post number 1 to post number 455).
The LROC Notebook - Part 2 (post number 456 to post number 900+).
LROC posts - Timeline (When was the very first LROC-article posted? When were the most articles posted? Was there a hiatus? Was there more than one hiatus? These and other questions are asked and hopefully answered in a new experimental page).
LROC - Browse Gallery Resource (John Moore's 2009-2010-2011 lists of image-links to the images that regularly appear on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera's webpage).
LROC Mosaics (global overviews of the moon's hemispheres).
LROC RDR Products
LROC Thumbnail Browser (some sort of handy guide to find your way through the thousands of orbital photographs made by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera).
Luke Jerram's MUSEUM OF THE MOON (the Moon-Wiki's special page for the world's most detailed globe-shaped photographic atlas of the moon!).

Nomenclature Lists

Alphabetic list of Named Lunar Formations - foreword
IAU Transactions (this is a very important page! Shows the lists of IAU named lunar formations and the years when the names were approved!).
Nomenclature Zoo
There are certain crater names... (an alphabetic list of the Latinized versus the common names of astronomers and scientists).
Named craters within named craters
See also: List op People with craters of the Moon named after them (Wikipedia page).
Nomenclature-Astronauts and Cosmonauts
Nomenclature-Country
Nomenclature-Jesuits
Nomenclature-Mathematicians
Nomenclature-Mythological Figures
Nomenclature-Selenographers
Nomenclature-Women
Name Changes list from NASA SP-241
Name Errors discrepancies with LAC maps noted in NASA SP-241
Optical Feature Names (nicknames of Clair-Obscur effects, Pareidolia, and Trompe l'Oeil phenomena, related to the moon's morning- and evening-terminator). Compiled by Danny Caes
Unofficial Names (Introduction page: Informal and Unofficial nomenclature of surface formations on the Near and Far Sides of the Moon).
Unofficial Names (A to F) (part 1 of a four-part alphabetical gazetteer, compiled by Danny Caes). + Appendix to part 1 (D.Caes's possible addition to the IAU's list of lunar nomenclature).
Unofficial Names (G to L) (+ small interview).
Unofficial Names (M to R) (+ list of people behind Unofficial/Informal/Discontinued Nomenclature).
Unofficial Names (S to Z) (+ miscellaneous Info).
195 names of scientists (an addition to the page TRANSACTIONS OF THE IAU - VOLUME XVIB - PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY (Grenoble 1976), with Wikipedia links).
Names on the moon and on Mars (the same nomenclature, for example: Copernicus on the moon and Copernicus on Mars).
Clementine Atlas Corrections (typographical errors investigated and corrected by Danny Caes).
LPI Apollo Image Atlas - Corrections (typographical errors investigated and corrected by Danny Caes).

The history of selenography and the diversity of lunar nomenclaturists

Names of M.F.Van Langren (Langrenus) (Whitaker's Appendix A, B, C, D).
Van Langren's names and Greek letter designations (less-known hills and hillocks which received names by Michel Florent van Langren).
Names of J.Hewelcke (Hevelius)(Whitaker's Appendix E, F).
Names of Hevelius's mountains
Names of G.B.Riccioli (Whitaker's Appendix G).
Names of M.Hell (Whitaker's page 93).
Names of J.H.Schroter (Whitaker's Appendix H).
Names of J.H.Madler (Whitaker's Appendix I).
Names of W.R.Birt and J.Lee (Whitaker's Appendix J).
Names of E.N.Neison (Whitaker's Appendix K).
Names of J.F.J.Schmidt (Whitaker's Appendix L).
Names of J.H.Franz (Whitaker's Appendix M).
Names of J.N.Krieger and R.Konig (Whitaker's Appendix N).
Names of J.P.H.Fauth And one name by E.Debes (Whitaker's Appendix O).
Names of Felix Chemla Lamèch (Whitaker's Appendix P).
Several short lists of lunar nomenclature, by a variety of selenographers (Whitaker's Appendix Q).
Unofficial Names of Hugh Percy Wilkins (Whitaker's Appendix R).
Sternberg: provisional names on the Sternberg Astronomical Institute's Complete Moon Maps (1967/ 1969).
Menzel - 1971 (much more new names related to Sternberg's, most of them on the moon's far side).
Erroneous locations and absent nomenclature on the farside map of Hallwag (Hans Schwarzenbach).
Erroneous locations and absent nomenclature on the farside map of Reidel - Dordrecht (Antonin Rukl).
Mysterious names on Rand Mc.Nally's moonmap.
NASA named craters on the equatorial zone of the moon's farside (Apollo 8 nomenclature).
NASA-related nicknames (unofficial Apollo-astronaut's nomenclature at the equatorial zone near Sabine, Moltke, Maskelyne, Censorinus, Secchi, Taruntius G and H, and Messier B).
Invalid names on the Lunar Topographic Orthophotomaps - LTO (names of musical composers, painters, writers, and other artists).
Minor Feature Names (printed on the Topophotomaps which were made shortly after the conclusion of Project Apollo's three scientific J-missions) (Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17).
Named craterlets at the 6 Apollo landing sites (an alphabetic list).

Other (mostly the sources of orbital lunar photography)

Anaglyphs of the lunar surface (3D-Stereo images of the telescopically observed moon, Apollo orbital observations, and Apollo surface 3D-photography).
Apollo 8 Orbital Lunar Photography (a handy guide to the many orbital pans created by David Woods and Frank O'Brien of the Apollo 8 Flight Journal).
Apollo 8 Magazine 13-E (a handy guide to partially indexed orbital photographs on B-and-W film).
Apollo 8 Magazine 14-B (a handy guide to partially indexed orbital photographs on COLOR film).
Apollo 8 Magazine 17-C (a handy guide to partially indexed orbital photographs on B-and-W film).
Apollo 10 Magazine 35-U (a Hasselblad magazine of not-indexed orbital photographs on color film).
CAES catalog (a catalog of unique and weird lunar surface formations, observable through common and powerful telescopes).
Chandrayaan-2 (and a possible soft landing near the moon's southpole).
Cx35 - Constellation Program regions of interest for human exploration
GEMINI orbital photographs which show the distant moon (an investigation of scanned online photographs, from the site March to the Moon) (the lower part of this page contains a small series of APOLLO 9 photographs of the distant moon).
Guide to NASA SP-362 Apollo Over The Moon (an overview of all the depicted lunar surface formations, figures 1 to 247).
Guinness Book of Lunar Records (a veritable lunar quiz, with questions and answers).
Lunar observers (Part 1 of an alphabetic list) (A to F).
Lunar observers Part 2 (G to L).
Lunar observers Part 3 (M to R).
Lunar observers Part 4 (S to Z).
LPOD Miscellany (not really a list or catalog, this page is an appendix of interesting images, related to the Lunar Photo of the Day site, compiled by John Moore).
LPOD Miscellany 2
LPOD Miscellany 3
LPOD Miscellany 4
LROC - Browse Gallery Resource (John Moore's 2009-2010-2011 lists of image-links to the images that regularly appear on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera's webpage).
LROC Mosaics (global overviews of the moon's hemispheres).
Lunar 100 (a popular list of interesting lunar features from Chuck Wood, arranged in order of increasing difficulty of observation from Earth).
Lunar Image of the Week - Apollo Image Archive, Arizona State University (a handy list of weekly featured surface formations, compiled by Danny Caes).
Lunar Orbiter Coverage index to images from missions I, II, III and IV by feature name, as listed in NASA SP-241

• Lunar Orbiter 1 - catalog of photographed features (by frame number)
• Lunar Orbiter 2 - catalog of photographed features
• Lunar Orbiter 3 - catalog of photographed features
• Lunar Orbiter 5 - catalog of photographed features
• for Lunar Orbiter 4, see:
  • the Lunar and Planetary Institute's Search By Feature Name
  • Image lists in the NASA SP-241 Catalog.

Radar Images
Transits (telescopic observations of unknown objects crossing the moon's disc) (small asteroids?).
Unknown lunar regions on orbital Apollo photography
Zond 8 Orbital Lunar Photography (an alphabetic catalog of Zond 8's photographed Far Side surface formations).

Administrative

Administrator attention needed
Images needed
Planning Pages


TEST page (a page to perform online experiments, only when one or more functions of Wikispaces seem to work not quite well).
Waarom de maan? (Flemish page, philosophical thoughts).