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The Moon · Crater · 680th largest named feature

Simpelius

Sempill, Hugh; Scottish mathematician (1596-1654).

What Simpelius is

Simpelius is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on The Moon, 68.9 km across, centred at 72.6° S, 14.7° E in the Manzinus quadrangle. It is the 680th largest named feature on The Moon and the 472nd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Sempill, Hugh; Scottish mathematician (1596-1654). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1935, under the theme it applies to every crater on The Moon. Of the 1615 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run Germany (234), American (229), France (163), Great Britain (160).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
68.9 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
72.6° S, 14.7° E
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
1935
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Manzinus
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
Scotland
Europe

What it would take to settle Simpelius

The Moon scores 29.1 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 72.6° S, 14.7° E.

Settlement difficulty here
28.9/ 100
Typical for this world
The Moon overall
29.1
0.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
970th
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 17° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is sunlight 30% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on The Moon gets.

Computed from Simpelius's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

Simpelius's satellite craters

The IAU names smaller craters around a major one by letter. Simpelius has 14, and each shares the parent's namesake rather than carrying one of its own.

Simpelius A 57.5 kmSimpelius B 50.2 kmSimpelius C 48.8 kmSimpelius D 55.9 kmSimpelius E 43 kmSimpelius F 27.1 kmSimpelius G 22.3 kmSimpelius H 28.7 kmSimpelius J 17.5 kmSimpelius K 22.4 kmSimpelius L 16.1 kmSimpelius M 6.8 kmSimpelius N 9.4 kmSimpelius P 5.7 km

What is next to it

The largest crater features on The Moon

All 1,615 craters on The Moon — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.