Area around the Sulpicius Gallus crater on the Moon

This mosaic of three images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows the area around the Sulpicius Gallus crater (upper left), a fairly fresh, bowl-shaped crater with a diameter of roughly 12 kilometres, on the near side of the Moon.

AMIE obtained this sequence on 18 March 2006, from a distance of 1200 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution ranging from 110 to 114 metres per pixel.The separate images can be downloaded here: [
AMI_EAE3_002083_00005_00016_H.JPG,
AMI_EAE3_002083_00004_00015_H.JPG,
AMI_EAE3_002083_00005_00015_H.JPG]

The area shown in the top image is centred at a latitude of 19.7º North and longitude 12.2º East; the image in the middle is centred at a latitude of 18.2º North and longitude 12.3º East; the bottom image is centred at a latitude of 16.7º North and longitude 12.5º East.

The area around Sulpicius Crater is geologically interesting for lunar scientists, since it is one of the areas where good spectroscopic data (that is relative to the mineralogical composition) are available both from the Clementine mission and from ground-based observations. These data sets, together with the colour images from the AMIE camera, are helping to better constrain the geological evolution of our closest cosmic neighbour.