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enter image description here

So I've made this moon with a texture from Google earth,

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tassili+n'Ajjer/@26.2042919,7.0063722,457055m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x12306aaaaaaaaaa7:0xa1414e994aabc4b6!8m2!3d25.8135947!4d8.1338558?hl=en

It's from somewhere over the Sahara desert..

I've noticed there are traces of river bed all over the picture, and they don't belong on a moon, but I also like the effect and the texture... and I intent on keeping it.

I would like a tangible explanation on why canyon could form on a moon, let says the moon retain a atmosphere the same thickness as Pluto, it's in the goldilocks and have similar characteristics as the moon (size, gravity, mass etc.)

Could it be the wind? ancient lava flow? acid rain? the smallest amount of rain over eons? what could drive this kind of erosion pattern?

P.S. there is also no craters on this moon cause the same erosion mechanism erase them from the landscape

Thanks a tons!

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    $\begingroup$ The answer is always - mice. $\endgroup$
    – void_ptr
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 1:13
  • $\begingroup$ @void_ptr 42 .. $\endgroup$
    – DKNguyen
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 3:32
  • $\begingroup$ Have you inverted the height map? it looks like the rivers are higher elevation than the surrounding valleys. I can almost see the elevated rivers casting shadows on the neighbouring hills, which one would usually expect to be below the rivers. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 13:27
  • $\begingroup$ I did not use a height map and I only wrapped the image on a sphere and changed the image to black and white. $\endgroup$
    – Veknor
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 1:03
  • $\begingroup$ Its got to be wind, because the texture of the dunes at the top are a feature that can only be created by wind. $\endgroup$
    – PcMan
    Commented Jan 8, 2021 at 10:46

3 Answers 3

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The obvious answer is "there used to be an atmosphere, which has since been lost".

Tectonic activity, while suitable for explaining large-scale structures like the Valles Marineris, cannot account for small-scale branching structures like your river valleys. There is, however, another way in which we can use Martian features as inspiration: ephemeral flows.

The atmospheric pressure may be too low to support stable bodies of liquid, but that doesn't mean it can't support slurries of liquids with solid particles in suspension for a while before the liquid all evaporates. Underground lakes or ice sheets may release seasonal floods which allow fluid to erode the landscape before it evaporates.

In the case of underground lakes, this will probably be a (geologically) temporary thing, which ultimately derives from an earlier era in which the planet had a thicker atmosphere and stable surface liquids anyway, but icesheets could be continually replenished by gaseous deposition.

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We can turn to Mars for inspiration - in particular, the striking set of features in the region known as Valles Marineris, a canyon 4000 km in length.

A composite of several images from the Viking missions showing Valles Marineris
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS

There are several theories for how the valley could have formed:

  1. In the past, liquid water on Mars could certainly have gouged out channels, much like rivers do on Earth. This is perhaps not a great option for you, as I'd be concerned about water's ability to remain in a liquid state on a moon with little atmosphere.
  2. Lava flows may have formed and then deepened the canyon (Leone 2014) over long timescales. Volcanism has been found in many places in the Solar System, so this is a reasonable possibility.
  3. It's also possible that plate tectonics are the culprit (Yin 2012), and that Valles Marineris was originally - as Wikipedia puts it - a "tectonic crack". Subsequent erosion by wind, water or lava could have shaped it even further. This might also be an issue, as I wouldn't necessarily expect plate tectonics to be important on a moon.
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    $\begingroup$ If you're not very good at translating Italian, then obviously it was Martians. Giovanni Schiaparelli $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 10:11
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    $\begingroup$ @Mazura The canals of Mars had a much stronger basis than mistranslating from Italian to English. Many observes saw what they thought were long narrow straight lines on Mars. Thus a theory that those lines were real structures of some type and were constructed by intelligent beings for some purpose was a rather natural one. $\endgroup$
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 20:18
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Here is one :

Lichtenberg Figures.

Make the moon atmosphereless, and close to a massive, massive, massive planet. So that it is tidally locked, and the planet takes all the incoming meteorites. Therefore, no dust influx.

Make it rotate slowly. Take a large mountain of suitable rocks (conductive).

The solar wind will charge the rock in the daylit side, and the shadow side will be in a lower potential. The terminator line in such a moon will be a sharp division between the day and night. Remember,no twilight without atmosphere.

The night side interplanetary plasma can charge some other rocks at a potential of different polarity. Now, after the breakdown voltage is arrived, you will get a Lichtenberg figure, generating the first cracks.

Tidal forces from the large planet will deepen the cracks. Further thermal quake will break other strata and shift these cracks back and forth.

Now add mass concentrations in the moon, and make it undergo heavy axial precession. Then you will have many such mountains forming many such cracks over time.

Then you can have this:

enter image description here

From link.

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