Digital Astrophotography - Detailed Moon

The Aristarchus plateau is noted for being slightly reddish in comparison to its bluish surroundings. The area to look for is the brown patch to the left of the bright crater.

This is a colour-enhanced close-up of the Serenitatis area with the Apollo 17 on its eastern shore. Note the red tinge around the southwest shore of the mare, and how the inner lava sheets have a warmer tone than the darker, outer flows.

This last pair of craters are Stevinus (75 km) at the top, a well formed, classic central peak crater, and Furnerius (125 km), a highly degraded walled plain which would once have looked like Langrenus.

This is Petavius (177 km). Probably intermediate in age between the last two craters, it still shows a similar morphology to Langrenus. However, it has sustained a subsequent impact on its northwest rim by the crater Wrottersley (57 km). Interestingly, its floor has also been worked by a process that has formed the radial channel Rimae Petavius. The long, shadowed feature beyond Petavius is Vallis Palitzsch.

Moving towards the south, next is Vendelinus (147 km). Its form is highly degraded by subsequent cratering and the filling of its floor.

With the seeing so good and with spare space in the laptop, we took the opportunity to attach the 3x Barlow and try imaging the terminator. This is Langrenus (132 km). This is a spectacular crater with a distinct ejecta blanket, terracing on the inner rim and a pronounced central peak. Evidently a relatively fresh crater, compared to Vendelinus which would have once looked like this.

Aristarchus was again a target for the Barlow.

This image of Gassendi was another triumph for me. Gassendi (101 kilometres) has a flattened floor that is criss-crossed with a fine network of rilles, many of which have been brought out in this image.

With the main composite image achieved, I attached the Barlow and concentrated on a couple of targets. This is Aristarchus with sunset approaching. Evidently, I had learned how to control the telescope better, and how to use Registax. The flat-floored crater beside Aristarchus is Herodotus. Schroter's Valley winds to the northwest. A very narrow rille that runs within Schroter's Valley is just discernable.

The mighty Copernicus (93 kilometres) has an impressive ray system that is fading as the crater reaches it's billion-year birthday. Here I tried using the Barlow to image its system of terraces and its central peak. Again, the results were rather soft.

Having just acquired a 3-times Barlow lens for the telescope, I began focussing on specific features. The Barlow increases the telescope's 2,000-mm focal length to 6,000-mm. This is Aristarchus at sunrise. The results were a little disappointing. The extremely narrow field of view of the camera with the Barlow made sharp imaging much more difficult than I had expected.

One of my favourite areas of the Moon is the 40-km crater Aristarchus and its surroundings. In lunar terms, the bright crater is relatively fresh at half a billion years old. It was formed in a region replete with the leftovers of lunar volcanism, especially the enormous Schroter's Valley that runs to the north and west.

Lunar crater Tycho, 102 kilometres in diameter. At around 100 million years old, Tycho is considered a "fresh" crater. The landscape surrounding it is the light-coloured highland area of the Moon whose features are generally reckoned to have been formed nearly four billion years ago.

Lunar crater Theophilus, 110 kilometres in diameter.