March 9, 2005
Foundering in a Sea of Indecipherable Details?
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Image Credit: Consolidated Lunar Atlas, Sheet F11 |
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Foundering in a Sea of Indecipherable Details? This is a blatant advertisement. But it is specifically directed at, and hopefully of interest to people who are fascinated with the Moon. I use many methods to communicate my passion and understanding of the Moon; LPOD is the way you may be most familiar with, but I have also published a book, The New Moon – A Personal View, and every month my Exploring the Moon articles appear in Sky and Telescope. Last fall I decided to try teaching an online course about the Moon. At the end most students concluded the course was worth the $165 tuition. I am going to offer this online course again starting March 29 and continuing for 6 weeks. Although there is a formal syllabus (topics described at the course web site) one of the most important activities will be a series of exercises to learn how to interpret a lunar scene. What types of landforms are visible, how were they produced, and in what sequence? Learning to “read” the Moon in this way makes lunar observing and imaging more interesting and more rewarding. At least that is what keeps me excited – I find that I learn and understand new things about the Moon with every picture I carefully look at and every eyepiece session I have. If you would like to push the frontiers of your scientific understanding of the Moon please visit my Geology of the Moon web page . And I thank Ron Bee and Paolo Amoroso for their unexpected comments about the course on the Yahoo lunar-observing list during the last day or so! Related Links: Yesterday's LPOD: One Good Occultation Deserves Another Tomorrow's LPOD: A Great View of Copernicus |
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