Sunrise on a Crater Rim

Every now and again, a photograph from a spacecraft stops me dead in my tracks. The shot above is one such image, taken by the wonderful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows sunrise on the western part of the rim of Jackson Crater, on the far side of the Moon. Jackson is a relatively young crater about 70 km across, with a well-defined rim that extends around it like a single, long rampart bent into a battered circle. Because the rim rises up from the terrain around it, it's the first to be li...