Zoomed into several of the lunar surface photos and noticed some of the very small impact craters are in a regularly spaced straight line.

Looks to me as if a meteorite came in at a shallow angle and basically skipped across the surface. Leaving dimpled craters as it bounced. Looks very similar to rocks skipping on a pond. Am I correct or is there another explanation for these?

▲

maccam912 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If I am understanding correctly you are seeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_chain which are craters caused by debris blasted out when another crater is formed.

	▲	wishfish 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you! Glad to see there's a Wikipedia article about it. And good to learn the formal name for this formation: "catena" (plural "catenae").

▲

xnx 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A chain of meteors would strike the surface in a line as the moon moves

▲

ninkendo 11 hours ago | parent [-]

A single “rubble pile” asteroid will easily break apart when nearing a celestial body, once it crosses the Roche limit. It will break apart into a perfectly straight line too (at least the impact craters will.) I would guess most of the straight-line series of craters are all caused by something like this.

	▲	kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Strafing fire from an alien warship will leave similar craters, assuming sufficiently large kinetic energy weapons.