February 28, 2021

Copernicus and shrapnel around the mountains (Feb. 23, 2021)


Here's another moon shot.  Copernicus is one of what I consider "big splat" craters on the moon (Tycho, Aristarchus, and Kepler are others).  Copernicus is about 800 million years old---young by lunar standards.  That's why it is lighter than the surrounding area.  Anyway, the splat threw up lots of material, so the area around Copernicus is covered with little craters and stuff that I've always figured resulted from the splat.  But a ridge of mountains rings this whole area, and those were there before the splat.

Some of my other favorite craters are in this area, too, like Lansberg, Reinhold, and Hortensius E (very cool), but I'll let you find those.  Also find T. Mayer C, which has a great internal structure.  A good resource for scouting around the moon is the map made from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.  Find the "Quickmap" at the LRO website here.  Click on the guide at upper left, click Overlays, and click "Nomenclature" on the first set of layers.  That imposes map labels on the craters.

This image is a stack of 2002/2002 images taken with the QHY5iii485c camera through the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at f/13.5, native focal length.  I just did the basic AutoStakkert, Registax, Photoshop routine and also used Canon Digital Prof'l 4. I can see details smaller than 1km on this image.


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