Move your mouse over the picture to see the names of the various craters.
This picture is a composite of two pictures taken on the same night and shows the south-western limb of the Moon.
If you were there on the floor of the crater Gassendi the sun would have set, but you would still be able
to see it striking the top of the central mountain and the mountains in the east.
Click here to see closer pictures of Gassendi under
morning lighting.
The picture was taken with a ToUcam attached to my ETX125 on 24th August 2003, when the Moon was 24.9 days old.
Date and Time: 24th August 2004 02:56 UT
Camera: ToUcam 740K
Telescope: ETX125 at prime focus
Capture: K3CCDTools. High gamma, 1/25", 0% gain, 300 frames
Processing: Registax. 163 frames stacked. Wavelet 1-2 = 5
This is another example of the importance of libration in images of the Moon. This picture was taken at the same phase (25.0 days) as the picture above, but the libration had tipped the Moon over 9° to the west in this picture compared to the earlier one. Look particularly at Gassendi; in the upper picture it is almost in darkness (and gave rise to the title I gave this page), whereas in the lower picture it is fully illuminated.
The picture was taken with a ToUcam attached to my LX200 on 17th October 2006, when the Moon was 25.0 days old.
Date and Time: 17th October 2006 06:22 UT
Camera: Atik 1-HS
Telescope: LX200 at prime focus
Capture: K3CCDTools. Low gamma, 1/25", 56% gain, 704 frames
Processing: Registax. 637 frames stacked. Wavelets 1-3 = 10, contrast 170, histogram 40-255 Home Back to SW Quadrant