Sci. Rep. Kanazawa Univ.
Vol.47, No.1,2, p.49-58, 2003

49

Rayed craters on the far side of the Moon
Tomokatsu MOROTA and Muneyoshi FURUMOTO
Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan
Abstract : A fresh crater on the Moon is associated with bright rays, which are made offresh ejecta from the main and secondary craters. Rays of a lunar crater generally become indistinguishable from the background materials with the age, and the lifetime of aray is supposed to be about 0.8 Gyr. Using Clementine 750-nm mosaic images, we identify rayed craters mainly on the far side of the Moon. A total of 235 rayed craters which
are larger than 5 km in diameter are identified in an area of about 1.55 x 107 km2. The
size-frequency distribution for the rayed craters indicates a lack of small rayed craters,
implying that the preservation of ray depends on the crater size.

1. Introduction
There are many craters which have bright rays on the Moon. Rays of craters are madeof fresh ejecta from the main and secondary craters [e.g., Shoemaker, 1966 ; Schmitt et al .,1967 ; Trask and Rowan, 1967]. They are gradually obliterated with the exposure time bysoil maturation and impact gardening (i.e., a turnover of the ejecta layer). Lunar rays generally become indistinguishable from the background materials around the age of the Eratosthenian/Copernican boundary. The age of the Copernicus crater, whose ray is almost
mature [Pieters et al ., 1985 ; McEwen et al ., 1993], is estimated as about 0.8 b.y. from
Apollo 12 samples [Silver, 1971 ; Eberhardt et al ., 1973 ; Alexander et al ., 1977]. Therefore, the lifetime of a typical lunar rayed crater must be approximately 0.8 b.y. [McEwen etal ., 1997]. It is expected that rayed craters provide important information on recent cratering on the Moon.
The main purpose of this study is to identify rayed craters on the Moon and make acomplete catalogue on them. We also attempt to investigate the dependency of the ray on
the crater size from the size-frequency distribution for the rayed craters.
2. Identification of rayed crater
In order to identify rayed craters on the lunar surface, we inspect Clementine 750-nm
basemap mosaic images compiled by United States Geological Survey. We can accuratelydetermine the rayed crater distribution with the uniform low-phase-angle images [Nozetteet al ., 1994, McEwen et al ., 1997]. The crater identification is performed in a highland region spanning from 70°E to 290°E. This longitude range covers the far side of the Moonand rims of the near side (Figure 1).

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Tomokatsu MOROTA and Muneyoshi FURUMOTO

Figure 1. Location of rayed craters. The counting area is enclosed by a box.

There is an observational bias in the identification of rayed craters with respect to thelatitude [McEwen et al ., 1997 ; Grier et al ., 1998]. It is generally difficult to identify rayedcraters in high latitude regions. Since images in high latitude regions have high phase angles, they represent illuminated topography rather than the albedo difference. Therefore,
the regions poleward of 42°latitude are ignored from the identification.
The total study area is 15.52 x 106 km2. The diameters of the identified rayed craters
are calculated by multiplying a crater diameter in a unit of image pixel and the pixel resolution, 0.1 km/pixel. A total of 235 rayed craters larger than 5 km in diameter are identified
in the studied area. The locations and diameters of the rayed craters are listed in Table 1.
We briefly examine the extent to which our identification of rayed craters is complete.
To our knowledge, there is no comprehensive catalogue of rayed craters on the Moon.
McEwen et al . [1997] have identified 96 rayed craters larger than 10 km in diameter withina latitude zone from 60°N to 60°S on the far side. The names or the location data of 28
craters !20 km are given in their paper. 27 craters of their 28 craters are located in ourstudy area. In this study, 24 craters among the 27 craters are identified as rayed craters ;the other three craters Joule T (37 km), Coriolis Y (31 km), and Dufay B (20 km), whoserays are described to be uncertain in McEwen et al . [1997], are regarded as non-rayed craters. Therefore, all the rayed craters larger than 20 km in the study area must be completelyidentified.
The location of the rest smaller craters are not reported in McEwen et al . [1997] ;they give the numbers of craters as a function of the diameter for a range from 10 to 19 km.
Since we cannot compare the lists of the rayed craters in this diameter range, we examineTable 1. Lunar rayed crates larger than 5 km in diameter.

Rayed craters on the far side of the Moon
51

Table 1. (continue)

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Tomokatsu MOROTA and Muneyoshi FURUMOTO

Rayed craters on the far side of the Moon

53

the completeness by comparing the estimated crater densities. There are some differences
between the study areas of this study and McEwen et al . [1997]. Our study area coverslimbs of the near side (70-90°W, 70-90°E), while McEwen et al . [1997] identify craters
in a wider latitude zone (60°N-60°S) than us (42°N-42°S). McEwen et al . [1997] report
96 rayed craters larger than 10 km in diameter in an area of 13.09 x 106 km2. We identify
119 rayed craters !10 km in an area of 15.52 x 106 km2. The crater densities obtained in
the two studies are nearly identical within a difference smaller than 5 % (7.33 x 10-6 km-2
and 7.67 x 10-6 km-2, respectively) to each other. A comparison of the cumulative sizefrequency distributions for the rayed craters identified in the two studies is shown in Figure
2. The general features of the size-frequency distributions for craters larger than 10 km
well agree with each other. Therefore, we conclude that our identification for rayed crateris sufficiently performed for craters !10 km.
There is a problem that the lifetime of rays is influenced by the geology of the background terrain [e.g., Pieters et al ., 1985 ; Grier et al ., 1998 ; 2000 ; Hawke et al ., 2000].
Large impacts in maria excavate and eject highland materials which are overlain by the ba-Figure 2. Comparison of cumulative size-density distributions for the rayed craters. Size distributions forthe rayed craters identified by this study and McEwen et al . [1997] are shown. Error bars are
estimated by the square roots of crater numbers. The standard curves for crater density[Neukum et al ., 1975 ; Neukum and Ivanov, 1994] and a straight line with a slope of-1.8 are
fitted at 30 km in diameter. The straight line is equal to the expected crater density of the Copernican craters.

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Tomokatsu MOROTA and Muneyoshi FURUMOTO

saltic layer. These craters have bright rays due to not only immature soils but also the compositional difference between the rays (the highland material) and the surface (the basalt)[McEwen et al ., 1997]. The rays due to the compositional difference are preserved for alonger period than those on the same rock type. It is supposed that many rayed craterswhich were formed before the Eratosthenian/Copernican boundary remain in the lunar maria. In reality, counting of superposed small craters [Neukum and König, 1976 ; McEwen
et al ., 1993] shows that several nearside rayed craters are older than 1 Ga. However, almost all the catalogued rayed craters, excepting ones in far side maria, are located on thehighland area and are free from the compositional problem.
3. Size-frequency distribution for the rayed craters
Many recent studies [e.g., Grieve, 1984 ; Baldwin, 1985 ; McEwen et al ., 1997 ;Culler et al ., 2000] of terrestrial and lunar cratering rate suggest that the flux of impactors
in the Earth-Moon system may have increased in the Phanerozoic. The recent high rate isprobably due to bodies replenished in the inner Solar system from the Oort cloud. There isa possibility that the resupply of impactors from Oort cloud has been periodically caused[Kumazawa and Mizutani, 1981 ; Furumoto and Kumazawa, 1990 ; Morota et al ., 1998].
If the hypothesis is real, it is likely that there is a difference between the size-frequency distributions for recent craters and old craters.
A comparison of the cumulative size-frequency distribution for the rayed craters identified in this study with the standard size-frequency curve for lunar craters [Neukum et al .,1975 ; Neukum and Ivanov, 1994] is shown in Figure 2. The standard curve is adjusted ata crater size of 30 km. The size-frequency distribution for rayed craters larger than 30 km
in diameter is consistent with the standard curve. However, the size-frequency distribution
from 10 to 20 km has a steeper inclination than the standard curve. The difference of thesize distributions in this range of the crater size would suggest a possible change in the fluxof impactors into the Earth-Moon system.
The observed crater density in a diameter range of 5-10 km is below the general trendof the larger craters on the size-frequency distribution for the rayed craters (Figure 2). It is
unlikely that any rayed craters in this range are overlooked owing to image resolution limits. McEwen et al . [1997] suggest that the resolution should be at least 20 times finer thanthe crater diameter in identification of rayed crater. Since original Clementine images haveresolutions of 0.1-0.2 km/pixel, the resolution of the Clementine images is fine enough toidentify rays of craters larger than 5 km.
A possible reason for the deficiency of rayed craters < 10 km is that the persistence ofrays depends on the crater size. It is known that rays of smaller craters darken more rapidly
than those of larger craters [e.g., Grier et al ., 1998]. For example, Lucey et al . [2000] report that the ray of the Tycho crater (85 km) is less mature than those of South Ray Crater(0.8 km) and North Ray Crater (1.0 km) which are younger than the Tycho crater. Rayedcraters < 10 km may be obliterated faster than large craters.

Rayed craters on the far side of the Moon55

We attempt to estimate the lifetime of ray of small craters from the size-frequency distribution. To avoid a terminological confusion in the following part, we call here young
craters Copernican craters regardless of rays. The size-frequency distribution for the rayedcraters "30 km has a slope of about -1.8. It is expected that the distribution for Copernicancraters smaller than 30 km also has the same slope. The Copernican crater density obtainedby fitting the line with the slope of -1.8 is indicated in Figure 2. The lifetime of ray as afunction of the crater size can be calculated from the ratio of the observed crater density of
the rayed craters and the expected density of Copernican craters. Figure 3 shows the lifetime of rays as a function of the crater diameter. The lifetime is normalized to that of therayed crater with the diameter of 30 km. For example, since the lifetime of ray of the craters of 30 km is 0.8 Gyr., the lifetime of craters of 5 km in diameter is calculated to beabout 0.5 Gyr. The straight line fitted to the data !10 km in diameter is also shown in Figure 3. The relation between the crater diameter and the lifetime of ray can be described bya simple power function with an exponent of 0.80.
There is a power law with an exponent of 0.74 between crater radius and ejecta thickness at the rim [McGetchin et al ., 1973]. This corresponds with the power law of 0.80 between the diameter of large lunar crater and the lifetime of ray. It means that the lifetime of
ray of a crater smaller than 10 km is roughly proportional to the ejecta thickness.

Figure 3. Lifetime of ray normalized by lifetime of ray of craters "30 km in diameter. A straight line isfitted to the distribution of craters !10 km by the least square method.

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