July 30, 2014
Everything is Here
image by Christian Viladrich, France
Apparently France has secretly launched a satellite into lunar orbit and Christian has been receiving the images. At least that is what the image quality suggests, but Christian swears they are from his Celestron 14" from a site at 1500 m elevation in the Alps - the terrestrial ones. This broad view of the north-east corner of the Imbrium Basin clearly shows virtually every faint feature ever imaged in the area. There is the very delicate rille on the west side of Plato (upper left) that is easy to see in Plato's ejecta but usually impossible to see where it cross onto the nearby mare. A similar rille is also seen on the southeast side of Plato, also starting in the ejecta and becoming narrower where it enters the mare near the simultaneously-formed impact craters Plato K and KA. Near the upper right are two other small craters of interest, the concentric crater Archytas GA and its nearby neighbor with a weird floor. There are also, of course, the rilled floor of the Alpine Valley and hyper-pitted floor of Plato. Look around and find many other fascinating features.
Chuck Wood
Technical Details
July 18, 2014, 3:27 UT. Celestron 14, IDS3370 camera and red filter. The processing is done with Autostakkert 2 with 400 to 900 frames stacked out of the 5000 frames of each video file.
Related Links
21st Century Atlas chart 19.
Christian's lunar website
