ONE reason the moon has craters because it gets hit by objects, small pieces of rocks that come from outer space. These are pieces of asteroids, comets that are flying around in the solar system. When they hit the surface, there’s an impact.
The moon has no atmosphere, and so even a tiny rock will create a crater. Typically when you see an impact crater, the size of the crater is much larger than the size of the the rock that created it.[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ] The rock is usually at least three to five times smaller, depending on the amount of energy generated.
In fact, you can detect recent craters now that scientists have such wonderful high-resolution pictures of the moon. You can detect craters formed in the last 10 or 20 years.
One famous crater on the moon is called Tycho. A picture from the lunar orbiter shows a top-down view in which you can see a nice circular ring, the rim of the crater. Inside that ring, the floor is slightly depressed, and right in the center is a little shadowed region called the central peak or an impact peak.
Air is a mixture of gases, mainly nitrogen and oxygen, with small molecules that are far apart. Wavelengths of light may pass by these molecules without hitting them.
[/ihc-hide-content]
