Abstract
Whether they are straight, arcuate, or sinuous, rimae (rilles) appear to be channels, which may be the result of faulting, lava flows, collapsed lava tubes, or extensional tectonic processes such as occurrences when basin-forming impacts were later filled with dense basaltic lavas. Straight rilles are frequently grabens, a collapsed floor between two parallel faults that can extend for hundreds of kilometers. Arcuate rilles are often found around the margins of maria when the stress of the cooling mass of basalt lava faulted the crust in concentric arcs. Sinuous rilles resulted when flowing lava formed channels or tubes that, when emptied or collapsed, revealed the snaking path of the lava caused by the differential velocity of the flow.
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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Handy, R., Kelleghan, D., McCague, T., Rix, E., Russell, S. (2012). Sketching Rilles (Lava Channels). In: Sketching the Moon. Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0941-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0941-0_4
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-0940-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-0941-0
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