Via Flickr:
Realizing that the Moon is in first quarter high enough to image in this time of the year but also with a small time window, I decided to setup my 8 Edge and take a couple of images near the terminator. First Quarter is an amazing time to image the Moon because shadows are still prominent especially around the spectacular Montes Apenninus which mark the south eastern border of Mare Imbrium.The areas close to the terminator are challenging because you capture in the same frame areas very well lit especially slopes in mountains and craters, there are normally lit areas and also the dark area beyond the terminator, so settings are tricky at times. The sky tonight was very "milky" (now it is cloudy!!) so I new I had little time to shoot and decided to not mount everything and do the focusing by hand directly on the telescope's native focuser not using the Motorized Crayford I always use when doing planetary imaging. I have added a captioned image for reference and the original frame.Interestingly enough here we find four different ages of Lunar formation. First is the Mare Imbrium or Sea of Rains (1250 km in diameter extends way beyond the frame of this image), where all these features are located, is the oldest of the craters in this image, created by a gigantic impact that formed the entire Imbrium basin about 3.8 billion years ago and is the youngest of the large basins on the Earth facing hemisphere of the Moon. If you look through a telescope at low magnification you will see it in the Northern central part of the Moon. It has a "smooth" surface product of a lava filling event. Archimedes (82Km diameter) the second largest crater in this image, was formed after the Imbrium Basin event, otherwise it would not have survived the impact that created Mare Imbrium, but was evidently formed BEFORE the lava filled this area which happened around 3.1 billion years ago. We have crater Autolycus, a much smaller crater about 39Km in diameter with no central peak and with lava and eroded rim walls. This crater and Aristillus (a larger 55km crater with well fresh defined rim walls and a central peak) are hard to pin down for age . The key here is the central peak in Aristillus which clearly shows that it formed after a lava flooding event while Autolycus has no central peak and its walls are more eroded. Some of the ejecta created by Aristillus actually drapes over the structure of Autolycus which indicates Autolycus was already formed before the Aristillus impact, so Autolycus is older than Aristillus but younger than Archimedes.The telescope view of this region is really amazing, Those mountains and shadows pop out immediately through the eyepiece and regions such as these help us learn a little about the different ages of the Moon and off course of the events that shaped our Solar System
Realizing that the Moon is in first quarter high enough to image in this time of the year but also with a small time window, I decided to setup my 8 Edge and take a couple of images near the terminator. First Quarter is an amazing time to image the Moon because shadows are still prominent especially around the spectacular Montes Apenninus which mark the south eastern border of Mare Imbrium.The areas close to the terminator are challenging because you capture in the same frame areas very well lit especially slopes in mountains and craters, there are normally lit areas and also the dark area beyond the terminator, so settings are tricky at times. The sky tonight was very "milky" (now it is cloudy!!) so I new I had little time to shoot and decided to not mount everything and do the focusing by hand directly on the telescope's native focuser not using the Motorized Crayford I always use when doing planetary imaging. I have added a captioned image for reference and the original frame.Interestingly enough here we find four different ages of Lunar formation. First is the Mare Imbrium or Sea of Rains (1250 km in diameter extends way beyond the frame of this image), where all these features are located, is the oldest of the craters in this image, created by a gigantic impact that formed the entire Imbrium basin about 3.8 billion years ago and is the youngest of the large basins on the Earth facing hemisphere of the Moon. If you look through a telescope at low magnification you will see it in the Northern central part of the Moon. It has a "smooth" surface product of a lava filling event. Archimedes (82Km diameter) the second largest crater in this image, was formed after the Imbrium Basin event, otherwise it would not have survived the impact that created Mare Imbrium, but was evidently formed BEFORE the lava filled this area which happened around 3.1 billion years ago. We have crater Autolycus, a much smaller crater about 39Km in diameter with no central peak and with lava and eroded rim walls. This crater and Aristillus (a larger 55km crater with well fresh defined rim walls and a central peak) are hard to pin down for age . The key here is the central peak in Aristillus which clearly shows that it formed after a lava flooding event while Autolycus has no central peak and its walls are more eroded. Some of the ejecta created by Aristillus actually drapes over the structure of Autolycus which indicates Autolycus was already formed before the Aristillus impact, so Autolycus is older than Aristillus but younger than Archimedes.The telescope view of this region is really amazing, Those mountains and shadows pop out immediately through the eyepiece and regions such as these help us learn a little about the different ages of the Moon and off course of the events that shaped our Solar System
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.