Bruce (crater)

Bruce (crater)

View of the crater Bruce (foreground) from Lunar Orbiter 3.
Diameter 6.7 km
Depth 1.3 km
Colongitude 0° at sunrise
Eponym Catherine W. Bruce

Bruce is a small lunar impact crater located in the Sinus Medii. It lies to the west-northwest of the irregular crater Rhaeticus, and just to the west of the even smaller Blagg.

This feature is circular and cup-shaped, with no notable impacts overlaying the rim or interior. The interior has a generally higher albedo than the surrounding terrain, but there is a band of darker material cross the mid-point of the crater from west to east. It is surrounded by lunar mare, with a few tiny craterlets in the surface to the east.

Less than forty kilometres to the south-southeast is the original point of the selenographic coordinate system. From the floor of this crater the Earth always appears at the zenith. Both the Surveyor 4 and Surveyor 6 probes landed about 50 km to the west-southwest of Bruce.

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