Observing the Moon

 

Our nearest neighbour in space, and a fine site through binoculars or a small telescope. The Moon shows amazing features at different times of its lunar cycle. Catching the late or early lunar faces throws up incredible shadows highlighting a range of features from huge mountains to vast flat oceans. Many interesting craters and mountain ranges exhibit fascinating detail as the Sun rises above them to illuminate earlier unseen detail.

 

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Two images of the lunar terminator taken 24 hours apart. In the left image it is possible to see the way in which the more oblique Sun shows such detail in the crater Copernicus, and the two smaller craters, Reinhold and Lansberg respectively. The feature towards the terminator is Agatharchides.

As the terminator moves further round in the right image the above features are apparently flattened by the angle of the light. Other feature such as the crater Kepler ( at 5'o clock from Copernicus) come into view. Towards the bottom the terminator passes to the edge of Mare Humorum, lighting up the area of Rupes Lieberg a fault area 180 Km long. Also nicely highlighted is the crater at the top of Mare Humorum, Gassendi, clearly showing the central peaks.

 

 

The craters Archimedes, Autolycus, and Anstillus in the Mare Imbrium. The Montes Appenninus and the crater Erastosthenes can be seen at the end of the range. This mountain range is the site of the Apollo 15 landing site.

As there is lots of light, it provides a great start for astronomical imaging. I started out with an Astrovid 2000 B & W video camera, and have also tried three digital cameras. The most recent being the Basler digital camera which has a resolution of 1300 x 1030. This camera is primarily used for microscopy applications, but works very well on the Moon through both my refractors. These images were taken using a Takahashi FS128 with a Sony DKC-CM30 digital camera at prime focus.

Additional Lunar observations are detailed below

Lunar Imaging with an Astrovid 2000 video camera

Lunar imaging with a Sony DKC-CM30 digital Camera

Lunar Imaging with a Basler High Resolution digital camera system

The Occultation of Saturn 16th April 2002

Hi Resolution Lunar Images

 

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