A Little Lunar Topography

                There is something about human nature that causes people to enjoy finding new places. It is what caused explorers to head into uncharted lands and cross oceans that have never been crossed before. It is the curiosity that sent ships to the edge of the seas and spaceships into the space surrounding us. We all have it to some extreme, I know I do…

                I pulled the refractor out on Friday morning. (10.9.20) Setting it up after work, around 12:40AM, I let it sit for awhile to acclimate and then looked at the Pleiades and the Hyades. I like to let the scope sit still and see what drifts into view. I enjoy floating through space via my telescope, admiring the shapes and patterns the stars make. I am often surprised at what drifts into my eyepiece!

                The scope hadn’t quite cooled down; it still showed a bit of distortion when focusing on the stars. I let it sit a bit longer and then tried again. The moon had since drifted up into view, slipping up from behind the trees in the east. It was third quarter, a little over half illuminated, a great time to observe the moon.

                Turning the scope a bit I centered it on the moon and put in a higher powered eyepiece.  12.5mm gave me a partial view of the terminator, the dark edge slicing across the lunar disc. Plenty of mountains and craters were visible. Some of them appeared to be hanging out into the dark of space but where actually just the sunlit peaks of various features, the bottoms of them hidden in the shadows.

                I scanned back and forth for awhile and noticed, towards the northern end, (upper left in the pictures) a shadow. Triangular in shape, it looked as if a pyramid had cast it. The shadow was long, stretching towards the darkened side of the moon. The tip was right near the edge of the terminator.

(clicking on the pictures will enlarge them!)

                I attached the camera to the telescope and took a couple shots. Later, after tearing the scope down and putting it away and getting some much needed rest, I returned to that shadow. I was able to find it on the shot I had taken, it was a bit longer than when I had first seen it. I cropped the picture and enlarged it and got a bit blurrier picture but the shadow was easily seen.

A little internet research gave me a name for the feature and some more details.

                It is a lone mountain called Mons Piton sitting in the eastern section of Mare Imbrium. It is about a mile and a half high and about 6 miles in diameter. In my shot, the large crater in the center, to the left of Mons Piton is Plato, 63 miles in diameter. To the mountains right are two craters, the first and larger is called Aristilus and the 2^nd one, further right is called Autolycus. This crater is the site of the first man-made impact with the moon. Luna 2 crashed on its rim on September 13, 1959. A bit further away to the right of the mountain is the site of the Apollo 15 landing, August 7^th, 1971. The larger crater below the pair is Archimedes, named after the Greek scientist. (We all remember the bathtub story about him don’t we?) It is a little over 50 miles in diameter, about the distance I drive every day to go to work and back. 

(From vaztolentino.com)

                It is amazing, to me at least, the amount of information you can come up with, on anything, on the internet. I also am even more amazed at how much you can find by looking at the world and worlds around us and to do that, you don’t need an internet connection! (Though it sometimes helps!) Go out and take a look at the moon and the stars, use your binoculars or a telescope if you have them or just your eyes. It will relax you, lessen the stress of the day and you might see some things you never seen before! Go out into the night and unleash your inner explorer!