Approaching Luna

[Nighthound]

I'm posting these to hopefully help those interested locate a few Lunar features that I've enjoyed in the past. Like so many I started in the hobby spending countless hours exploring the surface of the Moon with my telescopes. As I became more familiar with the surface I also became more aware of the best times to photograph certain features. Some are so low profile that they are only visible near the daylight/night line(terminator) in a gibbous or less phase.

For the sake of getting a point of reference here's a nearly full Moon. The crater Tyco is arguably the most obvious crater at this phase due to its large and brightly-lit ejecta field that projects in all directions from the 5:30 position. As a side note, the darker regions visible are called Maria and are lava flats resulting from the cooling of lava flows.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Lunar%20Photography/flmnx2-1.jpg

Here's a much closer look at Tyco(top center) and Clavius(bottom center). The chain of craters lined up on the floor of Clavius make it one of my favorites. Clavius is one of the largest crater complexes on the Lunar surface and is an estimated 4 billion years old. Doesn't look a day over 3 billion, does he?

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Lunar%20Photography/tyclav-1.jpg

To locate the Straight Wall look for a near quarter Moon and scan the terminator just north of Tyco. The wall is estimated in excess of 500 feet tall.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Lunar%20Photography/View-4.jpg

Lunar cracks or Rilles are interesting and most visible near the terminator as well. These features are believed to be the possible remains of lava flows or collapsed lava tubes.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Lunar%20Photography/rilles.jpg

I'm looking for some images I took of Lunar domes. These are some very cool features that are only visible under specific lighting conditions and take a little more work to locate. Hopefully I'll post those soon.

[Johnny9s]

Awsome shots and info Nighthound. Now I am wishing the moon was back out!!.

[jocareed]

Great shots. What type of equipment???

[fritzd]

wow! amazing shots!

[Nighthound]

Thanks very much everyone.

Joe, sorry I got so wrapped up in the subject matter I completely forgot. These were taken with a Meade 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain in both prime focus and afocal. The close ups were taken with a 4 mgpxl point and shoot attached to a 20mm eyepiece using the Digi-T adapter system. The wider shots were taken with a Canon 20D in prime focus.

[acchildress]

Great stuff. These are the kind of shots you see in the best scientific books.

[ArcticShooter]

Hey, these images are great. And thank you for the story.
Yesterday I said that moon picture looked boring. I will hereby withdraw that statement.

[Celestron]

Very nice Steve !

[drevilsmom]

That Meade 10" LX200 is my dream scope some day. I can barely convince my hubby to let me have a thousand dollar camera though, so I'd like to see what he thought of a multithousand dollar telescope! Nice images... I love the moon.

[Nighthound]

Thanks achildress, Helge, Ron, and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, I've owned the 10" LX200 and 10" LX200R. The original LX200 was superb optically and mechanically for viewing and relatively short exposure. The "R" version gave me headaches trying to get it collimated. So I now use a Vixen R200SS(8" Newtonian) for my longer focal length scope.

[MotoXPunk481]

Your images are incredible Nighthound, whether it's planetary or deep space... they're just awesome. Not to mention all of the information you provide with each image. Extremely impressive!

[Nighthound]

Thanks very much MXP481 for the kind words. It's fun to share what I've learned over the years and hopefully inspire and help those starting out.