Rima Prinz and Vera

  • Released Monday, August 1st, 2016
  • Updated Tuesday, November 14th, 2023 at 12:07AM
  • ID: 4444

The camera zooms from an overhead, global view centered on the northern rim of Prinz crater, at 26.3°N 43.7°W, down to an oblique, close-up view of Vera crater and the associated rille, Rima Prinz. Narrated by NASA Goddard planetary geologist Debra Hurwitz Needham.

Rima Prinz is a channel (a lunar sinuous rille) carved by lava flow. It lies just north of Prinz crater, about 100 km east of the Aristarchus Plateau in Oceanus Procellarum. The source of the lava is a volcanic depression named Vera. Together they create the appearance of a snake with its head near the rim of Prinz crater and its body stretching some 75 km, first to the west and then turning sharply north.

Vera may have formed as a lava lake fed by multiple eruptions of a fire fountain volcano, similar to Mauna Ulu in Hawaii, but vastly larger. Rima Prinz is a hundred times deeper and ten times longer than similar channels on Earth.

The visualization uses Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) imagery at multiple resolutions to show both small details and global context. It also uses a combination of elevation datasets derived from both LROC narrow-angle camera images and laser altimetry (LOLA). More information about the LROC datasets can be found here. The narrated videos are available in both English and Spanish.

The camera zooms from an overhead, global view centered on the northern rim of Prinz crater, at 26.3°N 43.7°W, down to an oblique, close-up view of Vera crater and the associated rille, Rima Prinz. Narrated en Español by Patricia Flores.

The camera zooms from an overhead, global view centered on the northern rim of Prinz crater, at 26.3°N 43.7°W, down to an oblique, close-up view of Vera crater and the associated rille, Rima Prinz.

An oblique, close-up view of Vera crater and its associated rille, Rima Prinz, at hyperwall resolution (up to 9600 × 3240).

An oblique, close-up view of Vera crater and its associated rille, Rima Prinz, at hyperwall resolution (up to 9600 × 3240).

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NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

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Papers used in this visualization

Hurwitz, D. M., J. W. Head, L. Wilson, and H. Hiesinger (2012), Origin of lunar sinuous rilles: Modeling effects of gravity, surface slope, and lava composition on erosion rates during the formation of Rima Prinz, J. Geophys. Res., 117, E00H14

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