Promontorium Heraclides

Annotated Sinus Iridum by LRO; Promontorium Heraclides is labeled at bottom-left.
Oblique view across Promontorium Heraclides and Sinus Iridum from Apollo 15

Promontorium Heraclides is a raised mountainous cape situated in Mare Imbrium on the near side of the Moon. Its selenographic coordinates are 40.3° N, 33.2° W and it is 50 km in diameter. It marks the western edge of the bay of Sinus Iridum.

Names

Promontorium Heraclides is named after Heraclides Ponticus, a Greek philosopher and astronomer. Like many of the craters on the Moon's near side, it was given its name as a crater by Giovanni Riccioli, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become standardized.[1] Michael van Langren's 1645 map calls it "Promontorium Sti. Vincetii", named after Saint Vincent of Saragossa[2][3] Later Heraclides would be mapped as a promontory.

History

The land form is depicted as the face of a woman looking across Sinus Iridum in a 1679 lunar map by Giovanni Domenico Cassini; this depiction, of disputed origin, is known as the "Moon Maiden".[4]

The Soviet lunar probe Luna 17 landed about 30 km from Promontorium Heraclides on November 17, 1970.[5]

One of the first image including video by JAXA's probe Kaguya were taken and recorded alongside Sinus Iridium, Montes Jura and Mare Imbrium and Promontorium Laplace on October 31, 2007. The spacecraft took the world's first high definition image data of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon on October 31, 2007.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Ewen A. Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.61.
  2. ↑ Langren, Michael van (1645). "Map of the Moon in the book Plenilunii lumina Austriaca Philippica".
  3. ↑ Ewen A. Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 198.
  4. ↑ "Map of the moon, 1679". The British Library. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  5. ↑ Brunier, Serge; Thierry Legault (2006). New Atlas of the Moon. Firefly Books. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-55407-173-9.
  6. ↑ "Mare Imbrium on HDTV". Kaguya. October 31, 2007. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016.
  • Wood, Chuck (2006-08-20). "Out the Porthole". Lunar Photo of the Day. Retrieved 2016-09-18. , excellent earth-based image of Sinus Iridum and vicinity, including Promontorium Heraclides
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