December 14, 2017
A Quadrant Image
Originally published June 12, 2008
image by David Dench, Rochdale, Lancashire, UK
It was probably Mädler's fault. When I was a much younger lunar observer we always talked of the first quadrant or some other quadrant of the Moon. That was the unit of discussion perhaps because when Mädler constructed the first large scale Moon chart he divided it into quarters, or quadrants. And the Beer and Mädler map was so famous that all the classical British selenographers of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century (who wrote the books I read) used the quadrant terms. Elger's map was in quadrants, but virtually none other was until the 1960s when we assembled the 44 charts from The System of Lunar Craters catalog into quadrant maps. And since 2005 many of us have relied on the handy Sky & Telescope's Field Map of the Moon, which folds into quadrants. When I saw David's mosaic of this month's first quarter I thought of the old quadrant maps and wondered why we don't have quadrant image maps. This one - smaller than a published map would be - nicely shows all the main features, which could be identified with printed names. I think that an image mosaic is easier to compare with the actual Moon than is Rükl's (or anyone else's) drawing. Will someone make an annotated set of quadrant images?
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
June 10, 2008, 21:15UT. Meade 4.5" Newt at F/16 + Olympus E330. Stitched with AutoStitch, reduced and processed with ImagesPlus and NoiseWare.
Related Links
David's website
Yesterday's LPOD: Learning a Lot About Little Hills
Tomorrow's LPOD: Straight or Concentric?
COMMENTS
1. Dear Chuck! Our mental connection still works ;) Few montehs ago I presented the Moon and your gratests Lunar 100 to Slovenian astr-photographes. They really didn't know the features on the Moon.... I encouraged them to take some pictures of the Moon too, while they are waitng for the dark sky ;9 and regard it in its beauty not just light polution. They did and I started a presentation with my re-descovered PowerPoint! It is just the program I needed but didn't use! On the link below is yesterday studie for 8 days old Moon (work in progres), but u can follow some others some pages back. The 1st one was 9 days old Moon. Photos are mine and from other Slovenian astro-photographres using DIAGONAL view - because I use it with my refraktor and there is so few of them on net (usually its reflector view or binocular).
http://www.astronom.si/forum/showthread.php?t=2774&page=5
OK, its not the real quadrant, but it's close and can also be done in the future. Check it some times on our site,
TY for al great work and daily deliverence of fresh Moon inspiration,
Aleksander Božič aka SandiBandi
2. Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears that the swirls of L100 are visible in northeastern Mare Marginis on this photo. Good shooting with a simple telescope and camera!
Howard Eskildsen
Howard - I think you are right.
Aleksander - we always have mental connection about the Moon!
-Chuck
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