The image covers roughly a fifteenth of the side of the moon that is visible
from earth. Some of the prominent features:
The first image taken through the Ritchie telescope.
The image covers roughly a fifteenth of the side of the moon that is visible
from earth. Some of the prominent features:
The light-colored streak that starts at the middle top of the image and angles down and to the right is Rupes Altai. It is a mountain range on the perimeter of the basin of Mare Nectaris and is probably a fault sloping down to the basin. The drop to the lower-lying area is more than 1000 meters. The crater at the lower end of Rupes Altai is Piccolomini, which has a central mountain massif. The crater is 88 km in diameter.
Left of Piccolomini, the smaller crater Rothmann (42 km in diameter, depth of 4220 meters) has its floor in shadow,and the smaller crater down and slightly to the left is Stiborius (44 km diameter, 3750 meters deep).
Left of these two smaller craters, straight down from the top of Rupes Altai, are three craters in a triangle (two at the top, one below). These are Zagut (top left), Lindenau (top right) and Rabbi Levi (lower).
At the bottom of the image, along the terminator, is a very dense and chaotic crater field. Moving up just to the right of the terminator are the craters Manzinus (98 km, about half the crater floor in shadow) and Mutus (78 km, only a small portion of the floor in shadow). These two craters can be used to get your bearings in this region.
BPAA Astronomy Photos:
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