
The Marsh of Decay
Palus Putredinis, to give its Latin name, is the dark, roughly triangular plain at the centre of this image. The Sun was rising over this area which is why some peaks and crater rims are very bright while the left side of the image is dark.
The largest crater visible is Archimedes – 50 miles wide – and the smooth plain on the rightmost part of the image is the edge of Mare Serenitatis.
The black arrow points to the location of the Apollo 15 landing site near Hadley Rille, a long winding 1300-foot-deep channel believed to have been carved by ancient lava.
The brightest peak just north of the arrow is Mons Hadley, the mountain range stretching southwest from it being the Lunar Apennines. The nearest peak to the landing site is Hadley Delta, and for scale the small crater skirted by the rille southwest of the landing site is about 3 miles wide.
Apollo 15 was the first of the ‘J’ missions, the final three lunar landings that included the lunar rover. Astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin spent 3 days on the Moon, driving up the the edge of the rille on one of their EVAs.
Imaged with a Meade 14″ LX200-ACF Schmitt-Cassegrain scope and a Flea3 U3-13S2M video camera. Monochrome image comprising 200 stacked frames, taken 10th March 2014 from my home observatory in Cheshire.