My recent observing sessions have coincided with a near-full moon so my first lunar targets have been towards the edge of the disk. In this post I'll be looking at Aristarchus which is one of the best known lunar regions.
The Aristarchus crater is located in the north-west of the Moon at the south-east edge of the Aristarchus plateau. It is one of the brightest lunar features with an albedo of nearly double that of most other features. Next to Aristarchus is the slightly smaller crater Herodotus which is darker due to the crater floor being flooded with lava. Evidence of earlier volcanic activity is also seen in the prominent rille Vallis Schröteri which winds its way northwards from Herodotus.
This region is a satisfying target for astrophotography and here are a couple of images from my observing sessions on Feb 26th and March 27th 2010.
The brightness and depth of the features shows up well in both pictures, particularly the bottom picture which has a more prominent terminator and a slightly sharper angle of observation.
From a technical point of view, each picture is based on stacking the best 400 or so frames from a 4 minute video. I did very little processing the stacked image - simply increasing the contrast, decreasing the brightness and making a few small adjustments on the layers to strengthen some of the finer detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment