February 3, 2013

Revisiting Familiar Ground

north to left image by Robert Reeves, San Antonio, Texas

While looking through videos captured six months ago Robert processed this one and discovered things he hadn't seen before. I have that experience all the time too. Here, Robert noticed three sets of crater chains/gouges on the right side of this image. These aren't quite radial, and not tangential, to Petavius, but presumably they came from there (or possible Langrenus?); as Robert said they might be a miniature version of Imbrium Sculpture. Look around and notice other smaller crater chains from other, unidentified sources. Staying on the right side of the image there are three other linears to detect. First is the rille on the floor of Furnerius at the center of the right edge. Next is the ghostly and thin Hase Rille which cuts diagonally from Petavius' rim to the top-right. Hase crosses the broader Snellius Valley basin crater chain. Snellius is the degraded crater near bottom right just above the younger Stevinus. Ejecta from Stevinus fills half of Snellius' floor. In the opposite direction a dark surface extends from of Stevinus - what is it? Above and below Stevnus are the recently seen Headlights, crisply defined but dimmed. Just impinging on the rim of Petavius is the odd named Wrottesley. A straight bright bar inside the right rim is so conspicuous that it looks like a defect. But LRO QuickMap shows it just to be a terrace that seems to have slid down from its original position, and in Robert's image, perfectly catches the illumination.

Chuck Wood

Technical Details
Sometime last summer through a classic orange tube Celestron-8 (38 years old!), 2.5X Powermate, DMK-51 monochrome camera with an IR filter. Processing was through Autostakkert, RegiStax 6, and Photoshop CS2, best 200 of 800 frames.

Related Links
Rükl plate 69
21st Century Atlas chart 4.
Robert's website (Thx, Patricio!)

Yesterday's LPOD: Inites

Tomorrow's LPOD: Where We Have Been

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