July 10, 2021

Albedo Atlas Needed

Originally published November 21, 2011
65% enlargement mosaic by Maurice Collins, New Zealand

Do you recognize this mosaic? Probably not because it never existed before yesterday. Recently, I have been lamenting to Maurice that I need a high resolution mosaic or atlas of the lunar surface under full Moon lighting. A number of times over the last week or so I wanted to check an LPOD image under high Sun - for example, does Sirsalis have rays? Is Cassini's Bright Spot in an image? Full Moon imaging still lags behind low Sun imaging probably because it is not as dramatic. But the images are the only way to investigate the brightness and darkness of the surface. The Consolidated Lunar Atlas, like Kuiper's previous Atlas of the Moon does show every part of the near side in multiple illuminations, but they are individual sheets and often what I am interested traverses two or more sheets. So Maurice used ICE to stitch together 12 mosaics (which, sadly, don't cover the entire Moon). The sample here shows the wonderful contrast and relatively high resolution. Three craters are visible on the floor of Plato, as is the dark band up the wall of Aristillus, and what causes the dark blotches along the rim of Aristoteles? There are dozens of full Moon images in the LPOD Photo Gallery, but very few have the needed resolution. Among the best are the huge mosaics of the Minsk Miracle Imagers.

Chuck Wood

Related Links
The CLA high Sun images are from the LPI digitized version of the atlas.

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Yesterday's LPOD: A New Lunar Map

Tomorrow's LPOD: Full Mounts

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