Moon and Stars Moon and Stars. The obvious crater with rays beaming from it in the south is Tycho and the dark areas are the maria (singular mare). Mare means sea: early telescopic observers, including Galileo (Fa-???), speculated that the dark, smoother areas were bodies of water and gave them water body names. The maria are actually basalt rock from massive lava flows ending circa 2 gigayears ago(???). In a sense the maria are seas of frozen rock filling giant basins.

Before the telescope, various images were thought to be seen on the Moon's surface. The most common were the ``Man in the Moon'' (i.e., a man's face) in Europe and the Rabbit in parts of Asia and the Americas. I can sort of see the Rabbit actually.

Apollo 11 landed in Mare Tranquillitatis (th Sea of Tranquility) in 1969: this mare is left of the center line at a mid-latitude.

Credit: T.A.Rector, I.P.Dell'Antonio /NOAO /AURA/NSF. NOAO gives open permission for educational use. I wonder if Dell'Antonio is my old friend Iain from Harvard 1991--1993.