Click here for a map and table of cities with the times of disappearance and reappearance. Tycho and its spider web of rays captivate around the time of full Moon, but we'll sidestep this celebrity and visit the crater Moretus in the densely cratered highlands to the south. With a favorable libration tipping the southern hemisphere into good view, we get to relish this deep crater and its prominent central peak that rises 2. Central peaks are rebound features that expose deep layers of the lunar crust that would otherwise be inaccessible to future astronaut geologists.
They'll be key places to visit and sample by both humans and robots in the hopefully near future. Way up in the northeast near the dark oval of Mare Crisium, look for two patchy, side-by-side maria, Mare Undarum and Mare Spumans, the sea of waves and foaming sea, respectively. I think a lot of us ignore them because they they're small seas sliced and diced by highlands material and often "crushed" by foreshortening even during the best librations.
Dark-floored craters in the vicinity give the entire region the appearance of "lake country. With the Moon rising around 10 o'clock local time, it's starting to get late, making tonight a good time to wrap up. We can't do better than the showy arrangement of similar-sized craters equally spaced in a gentle arc along the southeastern limb. Their mellifluous names bear repeating out loud: Langrenus, Vendelinus, Petavius, Furnerius.
Vendelinus and Furnerius are both beaten down and weathered, while the other two have sharper walls and prominent central peaks. If any crater is the highlight in the group, it's km-wide Petavius with its double-rim, domed floor warped by subsurface lava flows and neatly sliced by a wide rill that stands out in even a 3-inch scope.
I hope you enjoyed these lunar excursions. By seeing the ubiquitous evidence of impact and volcanism we can all better appreciate how vibrant and "alive" the Moon once was.
Log in to Reply. Bob King Post Author. Great pic, Brian! Very crisp. You must have had good seeing that night. I hope you enjoy those lunar sights. Your "short letters" are increasingly lengthy!
I've observed recently the moon with my mm scope : On april 25th, Milichius PI dome was in my eyepiece but i find the summit crater quite difficult seeing adequate but no more On april 26th, Gassendi of course but i like to observe the crater opposite in Mare humorum, named Vitello with its fantastic C-shaped gap.
The same night, the horseshoe-shaped Prinz with its numerous sinuous rilles, parallel, thiner and thiner.
Rimae aristarchus were in the same direction at the limit of the terminator. Tonight 27th , seeing is variable, Aristarchus is always whitish, as marked with chalk. Cobra head is not my best sight because of the mediocre libration The moon seems ill with its spotty surface : Marius hills are however well placed!
Fabrice, Vitello's a fascinating crater with a serpent-shaped rill. Thanks for bring it up. I'll have to include it in a future installment.
I'm out of my league. I've been enjoying the Moon through 10x42 binoculars! And through clouds, and, as she heads south in her orbit, through my neighbor's tree. Last night I walked up Bernal Hill to watch the full Moon rise through the fog bank over the east bay hills.
I stuck around for 45 minutes to watch Jupiter follow the Moon, then I walked around to the other side of the hill to watch Venus and Aldebaran set into the fog bank over the Pacific.
A lovely low-magnification, small aperture evening. Anthony, You're in another league. My first question is: cab you recommend which budget camera and telescope I can start to make pictures or time lapse recordings of the moon and observe the moon and the sky.
My second question relates to the retroreflectors they left behind on the moon and which they claim they can calculate the distance by the reflected particles. I read on a site that the distance that was calculated between the centre of the earth and the moon is ,6 km. And then lasers on earth are pointed to those reflectors. The size of the beams would be 4 miles at arrival at the moon, and a few lightparts would be reflected back per minute.
I dont understand this: one the equator the earth would move with a speed of about km per hour, so the laser situated their would have this speed. If the station is above or beyond, the speed would be lower. But the moon is circling around the earth also , and if the moon would be circling with in a circle with a radius of ,6km , then the speed would be Thanks in advance.
Quite a good question. Let me try to answer as best as I can. The laser light makes the round trip from the Earth and back in 2. During that time, an observer at the equator, where the Earth's rotational speed is about mph, travels 0. The beam is already a few miles wide when it reaches the moon, and the retroreflector spreads it out even more.
By the time it returns to Earth, the beam is 9 miles across. Even with these shifts, the observing station is still well within the 9-mile beam width, allowing it to pick up a few of the returning photons.
As for the moon's orbital speed, I don't believe it's significant here because the distance the moon travels during the extremely brief time the beam touches and reflects off the retroreflector is negligible. I hope this helps in answering your question.
Dear Bob, I can't imagine how only a few of the billion light particles are reflected and can then be traced back to the original beam, I understand that the particles have a certain signature, and must be then from that same beam. But my question is, will not random particles be reflected back as there are water, ice and metal parts in the atmosphere.
The more important question I had is this one: You say that the movement of the moon ,76 km per hour is not so important because the time the beam reach it and is bounced is a millionth of a second or less, and what does the moon move with that speed? Maybe 1mm!! In the video I saw from mythbusters they do not speak about any speed of the moon, they aim the beam , they find the spot , and then the return particles prove the fact that the reflector is there , without touching the aiming question.
The image was taken two weeks ago when the lunar phase was waning gibbous. The next full moon, a Moon without shadows, will occur one week from today. May 22, View image source. For more on the science of the Moon and how to observe it, visit our dedicate Moon webpage.
And if you want weekly moonrise times and lunar phases delivered directly to your email inbox, sign up to the BBC Sky at Night Magazine e-newsletter. Famous as one of the features explored by the Apollo 15 astronauts, Hadley Rille is also a great target to look for with a large telescope.
Under suitable illumination it appears as a little meandering black line near the northern end of the lunar Apennines. Visible to the naked eye, this dark, km-wide basin reveals lots of detail through binoculars and telescopes, including eroded walls, ridges and low hills. At the heart of a huge system of bright rays that spread for hundreds of kilometres, this 93km-wide crater has a distinctive terraced rim.
This beautiful km-wide crater lies nestled among the jagged landscape near the northern edge of the Mare Imbrium. It has a smooth floor and is surrounded by interesting features, including Rima Plato and the Montes Teneriffe. The Apennines mountain range stretches over km across the lunar surface. It is particularly striking when lit from the side — when the peaks cast huge, inky black shadows onto the surrounding landscape.
This valley can be spotted with even a small telescope. A fascinating km crater on the northern edge of the Mare Humorum. Best known as the Straight Wall, this km-long fault reaches over m above the lunar surface. Look for a thin black line near to crater Birt. This xkm lunar sea is one of the most distinctive features on the Moon. Unlike the other seas, the Mare Crisium is completely detached.
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