Apparent Ring of Craters on the Moon I saw this picture on the BBC news website.



There appears to be a ring of craters in the center of the picture, aligned in an approximate sub vertical orientation.

Am I just seeing things or does this apparent ring of craters a feature and does it extend to the far side of the moon? If it does exist, what form of bombardment or gravitational attraction would have create such a ring?
Actually, most of the surface of the Moon is covered with craters like that. The exception are the large dark 'seas', which are in fact basaltic plains. The seas are mostly present on this side of the moon; the far side of the moon is almost entirely composed of craters.

The reason you see a ring near the terminator (the boundary between the illuminated and dark part) is that the shadows make the craters much more visible.


  Due to the angle at which sunlight strikes this portion of the Moon, shadows cast by craters and other geological features are elongated, thereby making such features more apparent to the observer. This phenomenon is similar to the lengthening of shadows on Earth when the Sun is low in the sky.