A Handy New Map

A Handy New Map

For a thousand years, or at least a few decades, Sky & Telescope has sold a small blue map of the Moon, originally published (as Mappa Selenographica) in 1926 by the Czech selenographer Karel Andel. Sky has recently replaced that venerable map with a new imagemap that more naturally depicts the lunar surface than any previous map. This is possible because the base of the new chart is the remarkable composite image assembled by Pablo Lonnie Pacheco Railey of Mexico. Pablos amazing imagemap was first revealed on LPOD and is rapidly becoming the standard lunarimage. Pablo constructed it by merging together 150 low sun images from the online version of the Consolidated Lunar Atlas. The new map is 8.5 x 11 and includes an 8diameter Moon and a key to the 280 craters identified by numbers. The maria, major mountains and Apollo landing sites are also indicated. The chart is available in paper and laminated versions, and a North up version, as seen here, and East and West reversed version for users of refractors and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes and right angle mirrors. If you need a small map to help identify the main named craters at the telescope or on an image this may be for you.