Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Plato












Plato is approximately 61 miles in diameter with walls rising to approximately 6000 ft.
Plato has developed a reputation for various transient lunar phenomenons, including flashes of light, unusual colour patterns, and areas of hazy visibility. These anomaly are likely a result of seeing conditions, combined with the effects of different lighting angles of the Sun.

A couple of interesting sites:-
http://www.ltpresearch.org/plato1.htm
http://www.space.edu/moon/other/plato/PlatoChanges.html
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/usgs/I701/
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/bin/info.shtml?351

... also, I didn't know that it was the location for Space 1999's 'Moonbase Alpha'.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Mars on 19th Nov.

Poor foggy seeing. I thought the fog might stabilise the image... it did, but Mars eventually faded out completely!

Petavius















The central peak complex rises 8,200' feet above the crater floor.
99 x 110 mile.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Apollo 15 site at high sun angle

Here's another view of the Apollo 15 landing site. This was taken at a high sun angle, and most of the features were bleached out.
Using 4x imagemate again.












The Apollo 15 mission carried a mapping (metric) camera located in the SIM Bay of the Command Service Module:-
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS15-M-0414

Apollo 17 landing site

Two views of the landing site. The first one taken using a 2x Celestron Barlow and the one below a 4x Imagemate made by BC&F.














Below is a link to a Hubble space telescope picture, for reference:-

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2005/29/images/m/formats/web.jpg

... and the Apollo 17 mapping camera image:-

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-M-0597

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Mountains on the Moon.

2xBarlow, 15 best frames from 350 odd.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Peak or crater rim?...

not quite sure... looked good though.

My Granddaughter Georgia

Looking at the Moon the other night in my garden.

Nearly a full Moon

Captured through a Celestron 32mm EP, using my Pentax.
Didn't quite fit!

Moon Halo

Managed to catch this 'Halo' around the Moon tonight. Mars is to the left.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Mars on 14th Nov.












Very hazy conditions tonight (on Earth that is), didn't think I would get any images at all. But I was pleasantly suprised.
Using Celestron 2xBarlow and Toucam.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Aristarchus

Tricky one to process this. Very bright crater centre.

1.8xBarlow.

Link to Apollo 15 mission picture:-

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS15-M-2611

Montes Harbinger
















A section from the Apollo 17, panoramic mapping camera photo, to compare.
The highest peak is 17,650 feet, the one at the top right of both pictures.




http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LAC/lac39/
View from above:-
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth?opt=-l&lat=27&lon=41&alt=1000&img=MoonTopo.evif

Copernicus






Copernicus at prime focus and 2xBarlow.
I am now using Registax 2.1, this is an earlier version, but it seems more stable than the new one.