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Updated: May 13, 2025
Stöfler is yet larger than Walter; but most interesting of all these gigantic formations is Maurolycus, whose diameter exceeds one hundred and fifty miles, and which has walls 13,000 or 14,000 feet high.
MAUROLYCUS. This unquestionably ranks as one of the grandest walled- plains on the moon's visible surface, and when viewed under a low sun presents a spectacle which is not easily effaced from the mind.
There is a prominent bright crater on the W. of it, and another on the N., from which a delicate valley runs towards the W. side of Walter. CLAIRAUT. A very peculiar formation, about 40 miles in diameter, S. of Maurolycus, affording another good example of interference and overlapping.
STOFLER. A grand object, very similar in size and general character to Maurolycus, its neighbour on the W. To view it and its surroundings at the most striking phase, it should be observed when the morning terminator lies a little E. of the W. wall.
BAROCIUS. A massive formation, about 50 miles in diameter, on the S.W. side of Maurolycus, whose border it overlaps and considerably deforms. Its wall rises on the E. to a height of 12,000 feet above the floor, and is broken on the N.W. by two great ring-plains. On the inner slope of the S.E. border is a curious oblong enclosure. There is nothing remarkable in the interior.
Although Maurolycus had made some slight progress in studying the passage of light through different media, yet it is to Kepler that we owe the methods of tracing the progress of rays through transparent bodies with convex and concave surfaces, and of determining the foci of lenses, and of the relative positions of the images which they form, and the objects from which the rays proceed.
On the dusky grey plain W. of Maurolycus and Barocius there is a number of little formations, many of them being of a very abnormal shape, which are well worthy of examination. I have seen two short unrecorded clefts in connection with these objects.
Southwest of Tycho lies the vast ringed plain of Maginus, a hundred miles broad and very wonderful to look upon, with its labyrinth of formations, when the sun slopes across it, and yet, like Maurolycus, invisible under a vertical illumination. "The full moon," to use Mädler's picturesque expression, "knows no Maginus."
Although it is a distinguishing characteristic that there is no great difference in level between the outside and the inside of a walled-plain, there are some very interesting exceptions to this rule, which are termed by Schmidt "Transitional forms." Among these he places some of the most colossal formations, such as Clavius, Maurolycus, Stofler, Janssen, and Longomontanus.
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