October 3, 2004

8” Marvel

Image Credit: Ditmar Hutmacher

8” Marvel LPOD features many images that are exquisitely detailed. And most of them are taken with precision mounted 8"-10" APO refractors or 12"-24" inch Schmidt-Cassegrains, commonly with specialty mirrors. These telescopes often cost more than a new car! But here is an excellent image taken with a mass market 8" Chinese reflector - hope for the rest of us! Ditmer's image shows the northeastern corner of the Moon from Burg to Atlas and Hercules, and past Endymion to the limb. This area, like most of the NE quadrant of the Moon, has only a few well-defined craters but many crater ruins and fragments. Endymion is a 125 km wide crater reminiscent of Plato or Archimedes. The eastern side of the floor is crossed by rays from Thales, and three small craters all in a line - visible above as black dots - could be secondary craters but they aren't radial to Thales are anything else young. These near limb features of the NE quadrant are some of the least imaged and least studied of all lunar areas. How do we know what's there if we don't look in detail? — Chuck Wood Technical Details: Ditmar writes, April 25th 2004, 21:59 to 22:26 local time (CEST), ToUCam740K with Chinese Newtonian 200/1000 with 5x Barlow (elongated to f=6000mm) on motorized EQ5 equatorial mount, nearly good seeing but through widespread high clouds, Eight RGB videos with 1000 frames each made by VirtualDub and DivX-Codec. Some extensive processing (definitely lunatic :-): Each video processed four times with different targets in Registax, compensated atmospheric refraction, then converted RGB to black/white, resulting 32 pictures put together with iMerge, sum slightly reprocessed with Giotto, cropped edges, and downsized to 768x768pix/260kB. Related Links: Endymion by LO IV Yesterday's LPOD: Stereo Moon Tomorrow's LPOD: A Rille Draped Across the Landscape

Author & Editor: Charles A. Wood

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