It was a clear night tonight, and the Moon was well positioned for photography. Have a look at what I accomplished. Click the images to make them big.
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This is Mare Crisium, which is approximately 640km on each side. Above, and to the right, is Mare Tranquilitatis, which is much larger. The Apollo 11 landing site is not visible in this image. The overexposed area is the crater Fredholm and its surroundings. This image is not oriented. |
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The right side of this image is not the edge of the moon, but the terminator. It separates lunar night from lunar day. The prominent crater with the central mountain is Gassendi, which is about 114 km across. Gassendi A and Gassendi B are the two craters that are immediately north of it. Mare Humorum is to the south, and Oceanus Procellarum to the north. The heavily eroded crater Letronne is also visible. The northern wall of this crater was destroyed when the lava flow that created Oceanus Procellarum overran it. This image is oriented with south to the top (a common convention, as most telescopes invert the image). |
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This image shows a substantial part of Mare Imbrium. The "bay" toward the bottom is Sinus Iridum, which is approximately 411 km across. The crater on its rim is Bianchini. The three prominent craters near the bay are, from top to bottom, Mairan, Sharp, and Harpalus. The two larger craters on the Mare in the upper half of the image are, from top to bottom, Diophantus and Delisle. The crater at the extreme right is Aristarchus. In between Aristarchus and Diophantus, you can see the eroded crater Prinz. It also had one wall covered with lava when this Mare formed. This image is oriented with south roughly to the top. |
All identification of features was done using Virtual Moon Atlas 3.0 Expert by Legrand and Chevalley. It's a cool piece of software that's worth checking out.
All images were taken on the night of April 9, 2006 between 9:00pm and 10:00pm EDT using a Celestron Neximage webcam. Processing was done using Registax.
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