Impact Craters on the Moon

This topic submitted by Jennifer Harman, Sarah Mack, Chris Berg, Nora Hoxha ( harmanjm@muohio.edu ) on 12/14/03 .

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

Impact Craters on the Moon

Visit our entire study on the Distribution of Impact Craters on the Moon

ABSTRACT

For our project we decided to study the impact craters on the moon. We hypothesized that the craters on the far-side are larger than on the near-side because of the Earth. The Earth acts as a protector to the near-side protecting it from larger impacts from outer space. To verify this we looked at numerous pictures of the moon, photographs and actual observations through a telescope, to compare the size of craters found on each side. Since research on the far-side is so limited, we had to base all of our knowledge and data from previous studies of craters on the far-side. By comparing pictures from the far-side and the near-side, it is obvious that there are many more craters on the far-side than the near side. Also, previous studies have noted that the terrain of the far-side of the moon has been more affected from craters and other larger impact objects than the near-side. After concluding and evaluating our data and results, we are pleased to say that our hypothesis was correct: the Earth does protect the near-side from large impact craters, while the far-side is unprotected resulting in larger craters.

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