image by Mario Weigand, Offenbach am Main, Germany. Left, Moon as seen in almost no telescope, with north up and east to right. Center, the classic south up view of Newtonian’s. Right, the totally screwed up view with a diagonal added to the light path of a Cassegrain or a refractor.
When I started upserving the Moon I used a homemade 5″ Newtonian reflector. Like almost all observers of the previous 400 years I observed with an optical system that displayed the Moon with south up. Imbrium was in the bottom right quadrant, just where it belonged. When I worked with S&T to edit The Modern Moon they decided that contrary to my writing - which described the Moon as I knew it with south up - they required all the photos to have north up. I was outraged at their wonton disregard of nearly every classic lunar book and map, and thought of finding another publisher. The rationale for north up was that the International Astronomical Union had decreed in 1960 that the Moon should be depicted with north up, as orbiting astronauts would see it. That argument meant little to me - TMM wasn’t written for astronauts, and the IAU was really just making more mistakes as it did whenever it considered the Moon. But then S&T made an argument I couldn’t argue with - Rükl’s Atlas of the Moon, which S&T was republishing, had north up, and they would make a slipcase so Rükl and Wood would be nestled side by side on bookshelves everywhere. So I bit the bullet and accepted the abomination. And since then, as I used Rükl, the Clementine Atlas and my monthly articles - all with north up - I learned the Moon with Imbrium in the upper left and decided that LPOD would present images that way just to make them easy to compare with all the modern references. And I haven’t owned a Newtonian for decades so the Moon no longer appears in eyepiece views with south up. But actually for most observers, most published atlases don’t depict the Moon as they see it. Observers with Schmidt-Cassegrain and refractor telescopes almost always use a right angle mirror - a diagonal - to bring the eye to a more comfortable position. And this extra reflection flips the Moon over to the absolutely unnatural view of north up and east on the left. Fortunately, digital atlases such as the Virtual Atlas of the Moon can display the Moon in any orientation so observers who can take a laptop outside can use it. And the venerable Hatfield Atlas of the Moon now has a Sch-Cass version - which you can buy through LPOD!
Technical Details:
17 October 2005. Celestron C11 + Baader FFC + DMK 21 BF04 FireWire camera + color information from Canon EOS 300D. Here is the beautiful full resolution image.
Related Links
Mario’s website
Christmas is coming - consider leaving a list of lunar books on top of a spouse’s pillow - just make sure you include the LPOD URL so that you support LPOD when buying lunar books (or ANY book) from Amazon!
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