April 12, 2005

Sliced Slivers

Image Credit: Richard Bosman (top) and Stefan Lammel (bottom)

Sliced Slivers Thin crescent Moons are difficult for LPOD. To display the Moon in its entirety makes it too small to see the details. So today I slice off the troublesome cusps (to minimize the information free dark zone contained within their curvature) and relocate them in a graphically more convenient place! And because there are two excellent young crescents, I snuggle them together to show a half-day’s worth of sunrise. Richard Bosman’s thin 2.0-day old crescent (top) shows how hard it is to recognize any features when the Moon is so young. But with just a little more surface shown, as in Stefan Lammel’s 2.6-day old fatter crescent (below), many more features become visible. Both of these images were taken with excellent longitudinal libration so that all four of the eastern limb mare basins are visible: Australe, Smythii, Marginis and Humboldtianum. Three other large craters provide secondary landmarks for finding your way in this limbinal landscape: Humboldt, Neper and Gauss. With these as your guides, and Rukl’s Atlas as your reference, you can ultimately identify all the named features in this region. Great images, Stefan and Richard! — Chuck Wood Technical Details: (Top) April 10, 2005; 18h40 UT. C11 + ATK-2HS; 13 avi frames were used. (Bottom) Mar 13 2005. Homemade 5" f6 Newtonian (using a Takahashi MT130 mirror) + Nikon 4500 Related Links: Richard’s Astro Fotografie Stefan’s Lunar Images Similar LPOD (less libration) Tomorrow's LPOD: Righteous Recti

Author & Editor: Charles A. Wood Technical Consultant: Anthony Ayiomamitis Contact Translator: Pablo Lonnie Pacheco Railey (Es) Christian Legrand (Fr) Contact Webmaster A service of: ObservingTheSky.Org Visit these other PODs: Astronomy | Mars | Earth

 

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