Bruce (crater)

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title: "Bruce (crater)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["impact-craters-on-the-moon"] description: "Crater on the Moon" topic_path: "general/impact-craters-on-the-moon" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_(crater)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Crater on the Moon ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox Lunar crater"]

Field	Value
image	Bruce crater 4102 h1.jpg
caption	Lunar Orbiter 4 image
(White blemish is present on original image)
coordinates
diameter	6.7 km
depth	1.3 km
colong	0
eponym	Catherine W. Bruce
::

| image = Bruce crater 4102 h1.jpg | image_size = | caption = Lunar Orbiter 4 image (White blemish is present on original image) | coordinates = | diameter = 6.7 km | depth = 1.3 km | colong = 0 | eponym = Catherine W. Bruce ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Triesnecker-Boscovich_Si_-_Barbero_Zetta_Ferruggia.jpg" caption="website=GAWH}}"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Bruce_crater_3084_med.jpg" caption="View facing west from [[Lunar Orbiter 3"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Blagg_and_Bruce_craters_as10-32-4855.jpg" caption="Blagg]] below center, from [[Apollo 10"] ::

Bruce is a small lunar impact crater located in the small lunar mare Sinus Medii. It lies to the west-northwest of the irregular crater Rhaeticus, and is about 33 km to the west of the even smaller Blagg. It is named for Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American philanthropist and patroness of astronomy.

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 midpoint 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 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 southwest of Bruce.

References

• {{cite book | last1 = Andersson | first1 = L. E. | last2 = Whitaker | first2 = E. A. | author-link2 = Ewen Whitaker | date = 1982 | title = NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature | publisher = NASA RP-1097
• {{cite book | last1 = Bussey | first1 = B. | author-link1 = Ben Bussey | last2 = Spudis | first2 = P. | author-link2 = Paul Spudis | date = 2004 | title = The Clementine Atlas of the Moon | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-521-81528-4
• {{cite book | last1 = Cocks | first1 = Elijah E. | last2 = Cocks | first2 = Josiah C. | date = 1995 | title = Who's Who on the Moon: A Biographical Dictionary of Lunar Nomenclature | publisher = Tudor Publishers | isbn = 978-0-936389-27-1 | url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780936389271
• {{cite web | last = McDowell | first = Jonathan | date = July 15, 2007 | url = http://host.planet4589.org/astro/lunar/ | title = Lunar Nomenclature | publisher = Jonathan's Space Report | access-date = 2007-10-24 | archive-date = 2012-02-08 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120208141804/http://host.planet4589.org/astro/lunar/ | url-status = dead
• {{cite book | first = Patrick | last = Moore | author-link = Patrick Moore | date = 2001 | title = On the Moon | publisher = Sterling Publishing Co | isbn = 978-0-304-35469-6 | url = https://archive.org/details/patrickmooreonmo00patr
• {{cite book | first = Fred W. | last = Price | date = 1988 | title = The Moon Observer's Handbook | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn = 978-0-521-33500-3
• {{cite book | last = Rükl | first = Antonín | author-link = Antonín Rükl | date = 1990 | title = Atlas of the Moon | publisher = Kalmbach Books | isbn = 978-0-913135-17-4
• {{cite book | last = Webb | first = Rev. T. W. | author-link = Thomas William Webb | date = 1962 | title = Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes | edition = 6th revised | publisher = Dover | isbn = 978-0-486-20917-3 | url = https://archive.org/details/celestialobjects00webb
• {{cite book | first = Ewen A. | last = Whitaker | author-link = Ewen Whitaker | date = 1999 | title = Mapping and Naming the Moon | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn = 978-0-521-62248-6
• {{cite book | first = Peter T. | last = Wlasuk | date = 2000 | title = Observing the Moon | publisher = Springer | isbn = 978-1-85233-193-1

References

1. "Selenocromatica".
2. (October 18, 2010). "Bruce". [[United States Geological Survey.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::