7 replies to this topic

[Bart Declercq]

The terminator is always a very thankful target, the long shadows when the sun is low bring the relief on the moon beautifully into view.

But... At a high sun position the relief largely disappears, but the brightness variations on the surface (the albedo) become more obvious.

This is an image of the illuminated moon edge on 20/3/2024 - the area of the craters Petavius and Langrenus, but especially striking is the crater Humboldt, with both bright small impact craters and dark lava patches and, conspicuously at the top left of the image, Mare Smythii, a very old impact crater of almost 400km diameter, filled with dark lava - Mare Smythii is not always clearly visible, but here the libration was favorable to see even the trailing edge of this mare.

 

Because of the lack of shadows on this part of the moon, I pushed the contrast quite a bit higher than I usually do.

 

Click on the image to go to Flickr or check out the original size of 10,000x3,200 pixels at https://www.flickr.c...816616/sizes/o/

 

 

 

 

 

[scottinash]

This is lovely, Bart!    Strangely, it looks like one of the earth based light pollution maps to me, except, this one brings out "wanted" details and beauty!  Thank you for sharing!

[Teemu Ohman]

Truly a magnificent piece of work, there's so much to enjoy here (the full res version in particular)! One of the things that first caught my eye was the newly named Mirzakhani (near the top centre) with its bright rays spreading to the floor of Gibbs. Lovely to see an oblique view of it.

 

Teemu

[scottinash]

Truly a magnificent piece of work, there's so much to enjoy here (the full res version in particular)! One of the things that first caught my eye was the newly named Mirzakhani (near the top centre) with its bright rays spreading to the floor of Gibbs. Lovely to see an oblique view of it.

 

Teemu

Very nice! Thanks for pointing this out Teemu! 

[AstronomyFred]

Hi Bart,

 

This is a great Image!

 

Your remark is somewhat apologetic on the contrast, but I think that this was a great decision, as it makes this fully lit region much clearer in the image.

 

I really had to orient myself on the image, which was fun 

 

When I got my bearings I saw just how magnificently you had imaged Humboldt, with Humboldt N and the small "lacus" on the floor of the crater.

We are talking about a 200Km radius with 3-4 Km depth; that is no joke!

 

Your image brings out the southern edge very well and gives an idea of the scale of this crater.

 

The bright areas of La Pérouse A and Mirzakhani are marvelous indeed.

 

Thanks to Teemu mentioning it, as I was looking at this incredibly bright crater but could not find the name... 

Reading the post of Teemu, I found it 

 

Thanks for showing this Bart!

 

Clear Skies,

 

Fred

[Borodog]

Amazing.

[CHnuschti]

Nice resolution. I shall pay attention to Petavius B with its remarkable ejecta pattern, that is well delimited, in a manner like Proclus up on side of Mare Crisium. Did not notice it so far. But then, visually it's not so easy to see the ejecta well, as the pictures suggest.

 

In the picture it is in the middle on bottom. Petavius right of it, barely recognizable.

 

regards

[Navy Chief]

Amazing image, great work!