109

Virtanen is a lunar impact crater located to the northeast of the larger crater Sharonov and to the east of Anderson. The color USGS cropped-to-fit Section has remnants of the crater names but our b&w Section 109 shows Virtanen's location. Virtanen lies on the lunar Far Side and it has a nearly circular rim, with a relatively narrow inner wall and a small rise near the interior midpoint. A small crater impact near the eastern rim lies at the focus of a small ray system that covers much of Virtanen and its surroundings. The rays are wispy in nature and somewhat asymmetrical, with the distribution being much more expansive to the west. At the origin of the rays is a bright patch of higher-albedo surface. On the otherhand, the wispy blue haze at the top right image is more to do with USGS surface coding and isn't the area we're discussing. Valier, a 67 km partial lunar impact crater that is located in the extreme SW corner of Ridge Section 109, is in the center of the region map linked above. It is nearly attached to the western rim of the crater Tiselius. To the north-northwest lies the larger Sharonov (about a third of which lies on the western side of the section). To the south-southwest is Coriolis, and west of Valier is Dufray, both out of frame.The most notable feature of this crater is the satellite crater Valier J that occupies the southeastern part of the interior floor and shares part of the outer rim. The remainder of the rim is somewhat worn, with small craterlets along the eastern side. The inner walls of Valier are uneven slopes that are marked by several tiny craterlets. The surviving interior floor is a relatively level surface with some tiny craterlets scattered about. (Credit: Most of the information used in the section feature descriptions was obtained from wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(crater). Section 109 and this directory was created by Fran Ridge and Ned Haskin of The Lunascan Project).

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