View allAll Photos Tagged lunarlandscape
color-coordinated bicycle and drapes, neighborhood watch, dark side of the moon redefined, bench for waiting, for quiet contemplation, deep shadow, bright white stellar radiation, and, of course, window boxes, filled with flowers.
littletinperson
chancing Hebridean roads, often one direction single lane ones, is so much fun on isle of Lewis with its peaks and lochs and coastal stretches. A real joy :)
Tonights full Snow Moon as it was rising above the horizon. A beautiful golden hue and a aircraft cutting across it leaving contrails in its wake.
The eve of space travel!
Pine needles holding the moon with all their might.
"...even the most delicate aspects of nature can possess an unexpected power to support and hold on to something far grander than themselves."
"...the interconnectedness of nature, where even the tiniest elements play a part in maintaining the balance and harmony of the world. It invites us to appreciate the wonders of the natural world and recognize that strength can be found in the most unexpected places..."
"The pine needles holding the moon with all their might stirs the imagination and encourages us to find beauty, strength, and resilience in the delicate aspects of life that surround us."
negociating this one-lane road along South Harris isle was so much fun. From very time to time we encountered a car coming towards us which is what the passing places are for on this road. This is soooo my kind of road trip ;)
Moray Firth seascape of Permo-triassic offshore rocks, could be mistaken for a lunar landscape…
Exposure: ƒ/11.0 - 8sec...
Stay safe everyone...
All rights reserved - © Moraypix Photography
Weather
I don’t think I’ve posted different weather conditions before. So here are lots of rain; snow; clouds; The Moon; rainbows; fog and mist and other stuff all coming your way every now and then.
THE TYCHO CRATER , BOTTOM CENTRE
Tycho Crater is one of the most prominent craters on the Moon.
It appears as a bright spot in the southern highlands with rays of bright material that stretch across much of the nearside.
Tycho's prominence is not due to its size. At 53 miles (85 kilometers) in diameter, it is just one among thousands similary-sized craters.
What really makes Tycho stand out is its relative youth. It formed recently enough that its beautiful rays, material ejected during the impact event, are still visible as bright streaks. All craters start out looking like this after they form, but their rays gradually fade away as they sit on the surface, exposed to the space environment which over time darkens them until they fade into the background.
How old is Tycho? Because the impact event scattered material to such great distances, it's thought that some of the samples at the Apollo 17 landing site originated at the Tycho impact site. These samples are impact melt glass, and radiometric age dating tells us that they formed 108 million years ago.
So if these samples are truly from Tycho, the crater formed 108 million years ago as well. This may still seem old, but compared to the 3.9 billion-year age for many large lunar craters, Tycho is the new kid on the block. Directly sampling material from within the crater would help us learn more about not just when Tycho formed, but the ages of terrains on other planets throughout the solar system.
Planetary surfaces are dated by counting the number of craters on the surface, and comparing that number to the number of craters that formed on a surface for which we know the age by actually sampling the rocks. The problem is, there aren't that many places for which we've sampled the rocks, and confirming the age of Tycho would help date younger surfaces, which are not well sampled.
Tycho is also of great scientific interest because it is so well preserved, it is a great place to study the mechanics of how an impact crater forms. Tycho's central peak is thought to be material that has rebounded back up after being compressed in the impact, and though it's a peak now, it originated at greater depth than any other portion of the crater. The floor of the crater is covered in impact melt, rocks that were heated to such high temperatures during the impact event that they turned to liquid, and flowed across the floor. Impact melt flowed downhill and pooled, where it cooled.
Am Nordufer der griechischen Insel Milos ist der Strand Sarakiniko zu finden. Er besteht größtenteils aus grauweißem Vulkangestein. Dies inspirierte mich zu dieser Fotoserie:
A full moon is the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon is completely illuminated as seen from the Earth. This occurs when the moon is in opposition to the Sun (when it is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun; more precisely, when the ecliptic longitudes of the Sun and Moon differ by 180 degrees). This means that the hemisphere of the Moon that is facing the Earth (the near side) is almost fully illuminated by the Sun and appears round (while the far side is almost completely unilluminated).
Many thanks to all those who view, comment and or fave my photoes.....It is greatly appreciated ......Chandana
Light painting at Boathenge near Easley Missouri along the Missouri River bottoms in rural Boone County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera with a EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens at f.5.0 with a 156 second exposure. Processed with Adobe Lightroom 5.7.
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©Notley Hawkins
Another early morning shot from Kelowna's Knox mountain.
Frustrating time for flickr folks. This new format is a step backwards in so many ways.......
Thanks for your visit and any comments and suggestions.
"Copernicus Crater"
April 2, 2020
Copernicus crater (93 km width, 3.8 km depth) is one of the most prominent features on the Moon, easily seen with binoculars, even during the full moon phase, sitting in its webwork of rays.
Here it is seen at high magnification. Its rays are discernable, especially in the lower right. Notice the myriad secondary craters surrounding it, most gouged by rocks blasted up by the original impact explosion, each digging a new crater of its own when it fell back to the Moon. The raised outer rampart walls are prominent, as are the terraced inner walls and central peak. Rubble (massive boulders) is strewn about the crater floor, especially in the southern half.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
Explore Scientific Focus Extender 3x
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
August 18, 2021
Cropped from a Microsoft ICE stitch of 8 photos, each photo a stack of the best 30% of 5350 video frames.
Video collected with FireCapture, stacked by AutoStakkert 3, wavelets-processed with Registax 6, and buffed to a gloss in Photoshop CC 2021.
Celestron EdgeHD8, 2032mm focal length, f/10
ZWO ASI 290MM planetary camera
Celestron Advanced VX Equatorial Mount
Walking along the salt flats of Gruissan, I was struck by how the white salt mound created this otherworldly scene. When I noticed the half-moon in the sky, the composition suddenly clicked for me - these two white elements connected by the black and white treatment.
I deliberately kept the composition simple, focusing on the gentle curve of the salt "dune" against the clean horizon line. The black and white processing was essential to this image - it transforms what would be a blue sky into this deep gray backdrop that makes both the salt and moon stand out dramatically.
What fascinates me about these salt landscapes is how they can transform the familiar into something almost alien. The textured surface of the salt, with all its gentle ridges and patterns, creates this wonderful visual counterpoint to the smooth, distant moon.
Sometimes the simplest scenes can be the most evocative, and this moment of salt and sky felt like it needed nothing more than the stark contrast of black and white to tell its story.
Tycho Crater to the Lunar South Pole
May 10, 2022
"The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say."
- Gregory McGuire
I love the portions of the Moon along the dividing line between night and day, where details spring into sharp relief due to low-angle lighting and mystery lurks in the vast gulfs where no light can yet reach, save lonely peaks that rise high enough to touch the light of the Sun.
This is the best photo of the Moon that I have yet achieved. Seeing was 5/5 for about 2 hours, and gave me an outstanding data set. It needed almost no processing other than that necessary to create one photo from a stack of 1339 video frames. I cropped it to a 3x2 ratio, and raised the exposure 3/4 stop. That's it.
Please view this on a large screen, and take the opportunity to zoom in for closer looks. New details emerge with each step in. Explore the landscape of what may, in this decade, become the next home for humanity.
The best 25% of 5,355 video frames were stacked with AutoStakkert!3. Wavelets and histogram adjustments with Registax 6. Exposure adjustment and cropping with Camera RAW and Photoshop CC 2022.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
"As we approach the day-night terminator, passengers on the port side of the spacecraft can admire a view of the Moon's Southern Highlands. Our view spans the region from Deslandres, Gauricus, and Wurzelbauer Craters, which are directly below us, towards the Moon's South Pole, home of the first permanent human settlement off the Earth."
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
May 10, 2022
Tonight we were blessed with two hours of very good seeing conditions during my "prime time", so I was able to set up the larger telescope for some imaging of lunar details.
This is a close-up of Promontorium Laplace, the northern of the two "capes" that define the entrance to Sinus Iridum (the "Bay of Rainbows" from Mare Imbrium (the "Sea of Rains"). Here the tall cliffs of the Jura Mountains rise high above the lava plains to catch morning light. Notice the long sharp shadows cast by the 2600 meter high peak of the promontorium.
The main mass of the Jura Mountains extend across the frame just above center. These mountains are part of several mountain ranges that form the outer ring ridges that encircle the Moon's huge Imbrium Basin. The interior of the basin is filled with vast lava plains; a relatively small part of these plains fills the lower half of the photo. The plains appear smooth from our Earthly vantage, but this close-up shows the plains to be dotted by craters of all sizes. The pair of larger craters near the bottom center are Helicon (left - 25 km wide) and Le Verrier (right - 20 km wide). Le Verrier is surrounded by rougher-appearing terrain, probably ejecta from the crater itself. The smooth plains are also marked with long wavelike features, known as dorsae or wrinkle ridges. These low ridges show most impressively when illuminated by grazing sunlight.
Some isolated peaks rise above the lava plains of Mare Imbrium just interior to the ridges of the Jura Mountains. There are the long linear ridge of the Montes Recti and a cluster of isolated peaks known as the Montes Teneriffe. These mountains, together with others outside the frame of this photo are the remnants of an inner ring around the Imbrium Basin. Lower peaks of this ring were buried under the rising lava of Mare Imbrium.
Above the Jura Mountains another elongated stretch of lava plains spans the photo. This is Mare Frigoris (the "Sea of Cold"), the northernmost of the Moons great maria. It has many features similar to those of Mare Imbrium: a peppering of small craters, isolated peaks, and wrinkle ridges. Unlike most of the Moon's great maria, which were created by colossal asteroid impacts and subsequent upwelling lava, Mare Frigoris seems to have been created by a gigantic fissuring event that split the Moon's crust and allowed enormous curtain-like lava fountains to erupt across the moon's surface for thousands of kilometers. Similar eruptions on Earth are building Iceland, the volcano chains of Africa's Great Rift, and the mid-ocean ridges.
Above Mare Frigoris are the Moon's northern highlands, a jumble of craters of all ages, piled one on top of another.
The best 25% of 5,738 video frames were used to create this photo.
Stacking was done with Auto Stakkert!3. Wavelets and histogram adjustments with Registax 6. Final toning with Camera RAW and Photoshop CC 2022.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) is one of the Moon's great "seas", a vast impact basin that later filled with lava. It formed from a collision between the Moon and an asteroid between 4.55 and 3.66 billion years ago. Its diameter is 345 miles, roughly the distance between Bridgeport and Dauphin Island.
Mare Crisium is visible to the human eye in near the Northeastern edge of the Moon. It is prominent in photographs. In this image, it is soon to be engulfed in the lunar night.
Mare Crisium will soon be visited by small unmanned landers as part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. A contract has been awarded to Firefly Aerospace for a 2023 landing.
Best 20% of 9810 video frames used. Video was captured at 163 fps. Seeing was above average, 4/5.
Pre-processing in PIPP. Stacking with Auto Stakkert!3. Wavelets and histogram adjustments with Registax 6. Final toning and resizing with Camera RAW and Photoshop CC 2021.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Optolong IR Pass (685nm) Filter - 1.25"
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nv9br7P7g0
The person who dances with you in the rain, will most likely walk with you in the storm.
© All rights reserved Anna Kwa. Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit written permission
Part II of "Blowing Snow" - and I think I'll move on to something different tomorrow. This image - and yesterday's - adequately conveys the look and feel of that day, when a relentless wind blew snow through the prairie dog town. In its harshest version, this land doesn't look habitable; I think the prairie dogs would agree. Not a creature was stirring that day. Only me. And I made this shot from the rolling red Toyota blind, on the leeward side: this stuff was blowing away from me, not toward me.
As I mentioned yesterday, this isn't film grain or digital noise; it's billions of snow granules, being hurled by the wind, about a foot off the ground. We see this every winter, but it was especially dramatic that day. Unfit for man and beast alike.
In retrospect, I'm glad I made the effort to salvage something interesting from a brutal day when my favourite park turned into a lunar landscape for five or six hours. In another three months it will be benign, green, alive with fresh grasses and flowers and chirping birds. Hard to believe.
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
August 18, 2021
The crater pair of Copernicus (center bottom) and Eratosthenes (center right) become prominent in the Moon's middle latitudes in the days following the First Quarter Moon. Here they are seen in high angle light, their floors fully or nearly fully illuminated. There is enough shadow for the multitude of secondary craterlets surrounding them to be detected. These can be seen to radiate deeply into Mare Imbrium, the broad lava plain that fills the upper third of the image.
Separating Copernicus and Mare Imbrium are the peaks of the Montes Carpatus. These mountains are remnants of the high rim of the Imbrium Impact Basin.
On the bottom left edge of the photo lies a small cup-shaped crater named Hortensius. Just above this small crater a cluster of small bumps can be seen. These low mounds are lunar volcanoes, the Hortensius Domes. Look closely and the summit calderas of some can be seen. These humble mounds are the lunar equivalent of the large shield volcanoes (e.g., Mauna Loa) seen on the Earth.
This photo is a stack of the best 30% of 5369 video frames.
Video capture software: FireCapture
Stacking software: AutoStakkert! 3
Wavelets-processing: Registax 6
Final buff: Photoshop CC 2021.
Celestron EdgeHD8, 2032mm focal length, f/10
ZWO ASI 290MM planetary camera
Celestron Advanced VX Equatorial Mount
"Tycho's Craterlets"
Last night a friend posted a shot of the gorgeous ray system of Tycho. It reminded me of this image that I had forgotten about in my image drive. This shot illustrates another aspect of ray systems, the myriad secondary impact craters created when ejected material falls back to the Moon.
Rays are created when a large meteor or an asteroid hits the Moon. The meteor or asteroid usually does so at tens of thousands of miles per hour. They scatter surface material at high speed when they hit, then they penetrate deep below the surface. Their kinetic energy is converted to heat, which vaporizes the meteor/asteroid and much of the moon-stuff around them. That all expands in a catastrophic blast upward and outward from the impact point. The material blown outward is everything from county-sized chunks, to glassy dust, to incandescent gas. The gas may escape the Moon altogether, or cool and condense on the Moon’s surface. The dust blows outward in streaks across the face of the moon, sometimes for thousands of miles, creating the rays my friend captured. The chunks usually fall back onto the moon, blasting craters of their own, or they may scour the surface, cutting radial valleys through mountains and leaving scars as they skip over the surface. That is a sequence of events you do not want to witness up close.
This picture is my best effort to show the effects of those big chunks that fall back onto the moon. Tycho crater is a young crater, so these effects are more clearly seen in its case. Tycho is the crater above center and a little right, the one with a brightly-lit western interior rim, a deeply shadowed eastern floor and a brightly illuminated central peak. Once you find it, look at the craters to the east (right) of Tycho. Look at their insides. Their floors are riddled with tiny craters. Some are arranged in lines stretching away from Tycho, like the rays. My photograph can resolve craterlets down to a little under two kilometers wide. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them visible in this image. They are most densely packed near Tycho, but they can be spotted all the way to the right edge of the frame. For every one visible here there are many smaller ones below resolution. They have to await a bigger ‘scope.
I used an 8" aperture, 2032 mm focal length f/10 telescope as my lens (Celestron EdgeHD8). A monochrome planetary video camera (ZWO ASI 290MM) was used to collect 2086 video frames at 69 frames per second. This camera has a tiny sensor, with a crop factor of 6.7, so it can only see a tiny part of the Moon.
Of those 2086 video frames, the best 25% (522) were stacked into a single image. This procedure, called "Lucky Imaging" maximizes image sharpness and minimizes image noise and atmospheric blurring. AutoStakkert!3 software did the actual stacking.
The stacked image received wavelets processing in Registax 6 to help pull details from the remaining image noise.
Final processing was completed with Photoshop CC2020.
This photo spans an area from Mare Cognitum (in the upper left) to the Southern Highlands (in the lower right) along the lunar terminator. It includes much of Mare Nubium and the show-stopping beauty of Bullialdus Crater.
I often find themes for my discussions of my moon photos. For this one, I choose three: “Contrast”, “Deep Time”, and “Treasure Hunt”.
The simplest of these is Contrast. There are many examples of contrast here. What examples do you see? Of course, there is a broad range of brightness across the image, with deep darks in the lower left, brighter gray tones in the upper right, and near whites on high points that catch the rising sunlight most directly. Along the day-night terminator the lightest and darkest tones are closest together, where they emphasize the ruggedness of the terrain. The contrast between the overlapping craters of the Southern Highlands and the plains of Mare Nubium is also compelling. And then there is the contrast in the age of the craters. Most of the craters here are incredibly old – worn and flooded, many buried altogether. Bullialdus stands out as strikingly different. How so?
In Bullialdus Crater, we see a classic example of an Eratosthenian Period crater. What does that mean? To address that, we come to the second and most profound theme for this image, “Deep Time”. At first glance, Eratosthenian Period craters appear relatively young. Like Bullialdus, their crater walls are terraced and sharply defined, with some evidence of slumping. The central peaks are evident and stand tall above the crater floor. The outer walls or ramparts appear thick. They rise high above the surrounding terrain. Closer examination of the outer walls shows them to bear evidence of materials that flowed outward from the crater, burying the original terrain in radially spreading hills and hummocks. Chains of craterlets dot the area, also in a radial pattern of dispersion, where larger chunks of ejected material created new craters upon re-impacting the Moon. So, what then separates Eratosthenian Period craters from even younger craters such as Copernicus or Tycho? First and most evidently, systems of rays. Younger, Copernican Period craters sit at the centers of bright, light-colored systems of ejecta rays. Eratosthenian Period craters pretty much have none. Rays are made of light-colored material dug from deep below the lunar surface and sprayed across hundreds, even thousands of miles of the Moon’s face. Over time, this material darkens to match the rest of the lunar surface, a consequence of hundreds of millions to billions of years of weathering due to solar radiation and micrometeorite bombardment. A second differentiator between Eratosthenian Period craters and younger craters is secondary cratering. Younger craters have (as yet) been spared disfiguration by more recent impacts. Here, the wonderful outer rampart of Bullialdus is marred at the four o’clock position by a younger crater, Bullialdus A. It takes a great deal of time before another large impactor to draws a bead on the area occupied by a previously gouged crater. Given enough time, it happens. Bullialdus has been around long enough to have suffered that fate.
There is no way to escape consideration of “deep time” when contemplating the Moon. Eratosthenian Period craters like Bullialdus look youngish, like middle-aged features, ones that are “mature” but “still in their prime”. On the Moon those terms describe craters that formed between 1.1 and 3.4 billion years ago. That’s a long time ago. On Earth, the Eratosthenenian Period corresponds to an era beginning when single-cellular lifeforms were dominant, extending through the emergence of photosysnthesis and later sexual reproduction, and ending with the proliferation of multicellular organisms. Take a minute and let that sink in.
Enough navel-gazing. Let’s turn to other things in this photo that I find kind of cool. To the right of Bullialdus lies an oddly shaped, non-round crater. It’s a compound crater that looks somewhat like a heart. This is Wolf Crater. In certain lighting conditions, the heart shape is pronounced, and it draws the eye. Below Bullialdus, just right of center is a round crater with a lava filled basin, no central peak, low walls that barely rise above the terrain of Mare Nubium, and an unusual teardrop southward extension. This is an old crater. It looks to me like a keyhole, which is a useful mnemonic for its name: Kies Crater. Kies Crater is also old. It clearly predates the formation of Mare Nubium, for it is all but buried by the lava flood that filled the basins of Mare Nubium. A look around Mare Nubium reveals a great many craters that have suffered such inundation. To the left of the teardrop feature of Kies a smallish mound is visible, due to the low angle light. This is a landmark named Kies Pi. It is not conspicuous, but it merits a close look. You might spot a small crater or depression on its peak. If you spot it, congratulations! You are looking down the throat of a lunar volcano. The ‘crater’ on top is a volcanic caldera. I speak often of lunar lava flows; here is one of the contributory sources for the lava that flooded this part of the Moon. Below Kies Crater and Kies Pi volcano we come to a line of cliffs and ridges that mark the boundary of Mare Nubium. These cliffs, known as Rupes Mercator, are punctuated by a pair of similarly sized and shadow-bound craters: Mercator on the right, and Campanus on the left. As Mercator lies closer to the rising sun, a portion of its floor is illuminated, and contrasts with the remaining shadows cast by the crater’s eastern rim. Below the ridges of Rupes Mercator and these two craters like another small region of mare material. This is no major feature, but it may have found its time: this is Palus Epidemiarum, the “Marsh of Epidemics”. Who calls things that?!?!
By now you probably have noticed the long crack that runs across Palus Epidemiarum, Rupes Mercator and Mare Nubium, from the terminator in lower center and extending to the middle right margin of this photo. That crack is Rima Hesiodus. At the right edge of the image, Rima Hesiodus tangentially connects to the rim of the crater for which it is named, Hesiodus Crater. If you find that, note the small crater that lies on the lower edge of Hesiodus. You might see that this crater has another crater rim concentric to its main rim. This crater, Hesiodus A is famous for being one of a small set of craters that look like bullseyes, perfect double-tap impacts drilled into the Moon’s face. Again, the deep time issue rears up. How long would you have to wait for something like that to occur at random!
OK. Enough. I mean really this time. I will close with some puzzles for the interested. This is a region blessed with a great many features that have interested Selenophiles. I will draw attention to one: the Bullialdus Causeway. I learned of it in Andrew Planck’s blog. Its nature remains a mystery, but the Causeway is visible in this image. The following links will point the curious to this and many other features of this part of the Moon. Most are visible in this image, but some, alas are not. Let the “Treasure Hunt” theme commence!
andrewplanck.com/bullialdus-the-most-conspicuous-mo…/
Instrumentation:
Celestron EdgeHD 8 telescope, ZWO ASI290MM monochrome camera, Celestron Advanced VX mount.
Processing:
Pre-processing of 4926 frame .ser file with PIPP. Best 5% of those video frames stacked with AutoStakkert!3, wavelets processing with Registax 6, and final processing in Photoshop CC 2020.
I crateri Platone e Archimede, visibili in questa immagine, marcano il bordo del vasto Mare delle Piogge, distese che ricordano antichi mari di lava. In basso, i monti Appennini si stagliano come una catena possente, mentre la valle delle Alpi si snoda fra le montagne, un profondo solco scolpito da eventi cataclismatici del passato. Queste cicatrici sono oggi simboli di una bellezza ancestrale, testimoni immutabili della storia lunare. È lo stesso satellite che affascinava gli antichi sapienti, per i quali era simbolo di mistero e conoscenza celeste, e ancora oggi ci ispira con la sua incrollabile presenza e il suo fascino eterno.
Foto di stasera, telescopio Mak 127/1500mm con Canon EOS 800D e lente di Barlow 2x
#moon #lunaphotography #astronomy #telescope #craters #platocrater #archimedescrater #mareimbrium #appenninemountains #alpinevalley #lunarlandscape #moongazing #lunarbeauty #astrophotography #celestialbeauty #ancientmoon #planetaryscience #philosophyofspace #stargazing #cosmology
I am one who cannot take a telescopic trip to the moon without at least dropping by Plato Crater for a short visit. I just find it so visually appealing. The evening of February 2nd this photo found Plato bathed in early morning light, with only the western two-thirds of its crater floor illuminated. The view was especially striking for the dramatic shadows the peaks of Plato’s eastern rim cast across the crater’s smooth lava floor. Looking at them in this photo, I was reminded of the jagged peaks that tower over Moorea’s Ōpūnohu Bay, which, although magnificent, are considerably smaller than the peaks of Plato’s eastern rim. That set me musing over ways to conceptualize the heights of those peaks. I have read that three of these peaks tower 1.5, 1.8, and 2.1 kilometers above the floor of Plato. Now that might seem like a lot, towering almost 6,900 feet (higher than any peak in the Eastern USA), but then I compared those values to other things I read about Plato. For example, consider that Plato has no central peak. Why not? It’s because the floor of Plato is buried under 2.6 km of lava, enough to overtop even the tallest of the eastern rim peaks, were it in the center of Plato. That is a LOT of lava. Plato is 101 km in diameter. Considering the mass of lava filling Plato as a cylinder of diameter 101 km and height of 2.6 km, that comes out around 20,830 cubic km of lava, maximum. (Somebody check my math: I’ve never excelled at math.) But consider another thing I have learned about Plato. See those tiny craterlets in its floor. The biggest of them, the one nearly in the center, that little sucker is about 2.7 km in diameter. THAT MAKES IT WIDER THAN THOSE PEAKS TOWER ABOVE IT.
Celestron EdgeHD 8 telescope, ZWO ASI290MM monochrome camera, Celestron Advanced VX mount.
Pre-processing of 3401 frame .ser file with PIPP. Best 10% of those video frames, stacked with AutoStakkert 3, wavelets processing with Registax 6, and final processing in Photoshop CC 2019.
May 21, 2021
Moon 74.7% full
Here is a previously unprocessed photo of the region of three prominent craters familiar to all selenophiles: the trio of (from top to bottom) Purbach, Regiomontanus, and Walther. Here they are captured under high-angle illumination from the East (late morning on the Moon), which reduces contrast and makes photography a challenge.
Photographic conditions for this session were challenging, with below average transparency, variable seeing (2.5-3 out of 5) and thin, high clouds. To counteract these difficulties, more images were collected and an IR (infrared passing) filter was used. The best 15% of 5,767 video frames were used to create this photo.
Stacking was done with Auto Stakkert!3. Wavelets and histogram adjustments with Registax 6. Toning, cropping and rotation with Camera RAW and Photoshop CC 2021.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
Optolong IR-Pass filter (685nm)
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
Panorama image (made up of a number of images stitched together) showing molten lava sloshing around the bottom of the Santiago crater of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.
To view & purchase my best images please visit my website at www.jasonwells.co.uk.
"Clavius Crater and Points South"
April 22, 2021, 23:18 CDT
Moon age 10.3 Days
I have been on a craters kick for a day or so. Anyone who pays attention to these is wise to expect a photo of Clavius crater to show up sometime. I can’t help it – Clavius is a beauty, and it dominates a region offering dramatic contrasts of light and shadow.
This image catches Clavius under pretty high-angle light, like late morning. The craters to its South are increasingly shadowed, until it becomes difficult to separate them from each other and from the edge of night. Here and there, first light catches the peaks of mountains emerging from the gloom.
Seeing conditions were about 4/5 at the time this video was obtained. I did not venture using a focal extender to magnify the image because I had a nice focus locked in and did not want to risk losing it: instead, I opted to use a smaller region of interest in FireCapture (1000x800px, an in-camera crop) on this one.
The best 12% of 5779 video frames were used in creating this image.
I omitted my usual step of pre-processing the video in PIPP software, as tracking was good. Instead, the video was stacked without pre-processing with Auto Stakkert!3 software. Wavelets and histogram adjustments of the AutoStakkert!3 output image were done with Registax 6. Final toning, minor cropping and watermarking were done with Camera RAW and Photoshop CC 2021.
Celestron Edge HD8 telescope
ZWO ASI 290MM camera
Celestron Advanced VX Mount
As I rounded the coastline, Westcombe beach came into view for the very first time. Instantly, it was easy to see the potential of the large, angular, monument-like rocks with their shiny slate surface, which seemed to reflect the light from above. It was certainly very eye-catching.
Just before the sun began to sink below the horizon, I moved away from the sandy beach to compose my final shot of the day. As twilight approached, the air was unusually still with the sea and the sky appearing virtually motionless – this was perfect for what I had in mind.
This slow exposure image perhaps evokes a sense of the prehistoric era or even otherworldly landscapes. It’s definitely one of my personal favourites. Thanks for looking. Mk
June 17, 2021
Please forgive the odd orientation of this photo. It was taken while I was setting up the telescope and obtaining focus, before I fussed with orientation. Clouds were threatening, and I wanted to get at least one shot before they shut me down.
The terrain of and surrounding the Montes Haemus fascinates me. The high peaks on the left are the Montes Apenninus; they mark the outer rim of the huge Imbrium impact basin (everything on the far left). The Montes Haemus are the scoured-looking hills and valleys extending towards the right from the Montes Apenninus. This terrain was scarred at the time of the Imbrium impact by the cataclysmic high-velocity wave of incandescent rock and vapor that was ejected by the impact.
Below the Montes Haemus is the bird-in-flight shaped Rima Hyginus. To the right of Rima Hyginus is the linear Rima Ariadaeus, and below Rima Hyginus is the network of the Rimae Triesnecker.
Between Rima Hyginus and the Montes Apenninus is the basalt plain of Mare Vaporum.
Immediately above Rima Hyginus is a dark region of hills, the Mare Vaporum pyroclastic deposits. Volcanic processes in this area covered the terrain with pyroclastic materials that darkened it relative to the surrounding area.
Best 30% of 1709 frames.
Celestron Edge HD8
ZWO ASI 290MM
No filter