Near Full Moon, 20 Nov

[brianb]

The night of 19-20 Nov being clear and the Moon just two days short of full shining brightly and reasonably high in the sky, it sort of demanded to be imaged:


2010 Nov 20. William Optics FLT 110, 2x Powermate, W29 (deep red) filter, Imaging Source DMK41 camera. Mosaic of 20 frames captured between 0119 & 0142 UT, each frame being a stack of 200 frames out of 800 captured, processed in Avistack V1.81. Mosaic processing by Microsoft Image Composite Editor. Post production in Photoshop Elements v5. This is a 25% rescale; a full size version can be found here - select "hi res image" from the zoom menu.

A small sample of the full size version is shown below.



Transparency good. Seeing poorish with significant continuous slow boiling. Temperature +4C, wind SE force 2, baro 1014 mb rising slowly.

Colongitude 74.2 deg. Illumination 97.1%. Solar inclination -0.9 deg. Libration in Latitude -05 deg 05 min. Libration in Longitude -04 deg 21 min. Lunar diameter 30.72'. Altitude 41.2 deg.

[markt]

Very nice images Brian!!! 

[rjgjr]

Beautiful images Brian, I could sit and look at the full size versions for hours with all the pinpoint deatil.

[Big Dipper]

it sort of demanded to be imaged:

Mainly due to the fact that it is currently drowning out most of the other objects in the sky!

Focus looks spot on there & the contrast is just right, too. Thanks for sharing.

[paulster78]

An excellent result there Brian!

[brianb]

Thanks guys; I'm not a lunar specialist but the thing never ceases to amaze me in all its ever-changing but timeless glory. Every time I image the Moon I find something I hadn't noticed before, in this case it was the faint & incomplete circular structure surrounding Schröter's Valley with Aristarchus at the "4 o clock" position on its edge - remnants of a large crater buried under the maria basalt, an artifact associated with the impact that produced Aristarchus or an optical illusion?

[John9929]

- remnants of a large crater buried under the maria basalt, an artifact associated with the impact that produced Aristarchus or an optical illusion?

Great image Brian, in fact neither of those! What you see is the Aristarchus Plateau, it is roughly 200kl wide and rises to about 2kl above the surrounding mare, an island if you like! As to it's formation, I don't know, probably some sort of swelling from below. HTH's.

[martinastro]

That's a true stunner Brian!! 

[brianb]

What you see is the Aristarchus Plateau,

I thought that was roughly diamond shaped with Aristarchus at its (my image orientation) bottom right ... this is more or less but not completely enclosed by the circular structure I see, the bottom arm of which appears to be "ray like" in its brightness and to start off with coincides with the bottom of the diamond but extends further left, whilst the top arm (more of a contrast change than a structure) cuts off the top right corner of the diamond.

The actual diamond shape of the plateau is badly shown in my image above, due no doubt to the lighting. A crop of a similar area of my image of Nov 01 shows the Aristarchus Plateau beautifully but it's much harder to trace the circular structure I noted above. That's what I meant by "ever-changing but timeless" ...


2010 Nov 01, 0610 - 0617 UT. Same instrumental details as above.

[John9929]

Was only trying to be helpful Brian no harm done, sorry I can't see the feature you see on either image. Perhaps someone else with more knowledge of the moon might be able to advise.

[brianb]

Was only trying to be helpful Brian no harm done, sorry I can't see the feature you see on either image

Yes I know. Here's a copy with the circular feature highlighted, go back to the original and you should be able to trace it easily enough ... I can even see it on the second image now I know what to look for.

[DaveH64]

Cracking images Brian. Always fascinated by such crisp Moon shots.