Sunrise over Mercator
Move your mouse over the picture to see the names of the various features.
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Mercator and Campanus are similar-sized craters (49Km diameter) on the south-west shores of the Mare
Nubium. Kies is a crater that has evidently been flooded by lavas from Mare Nubium and therefore pre-dates that event.
It also acts as a marker for Kies π, a volcano. The structure is about 10 Km
across and has a summit crater 2 Km across which is just visible in this picture. Another
interesting feature is Rima Hesiodus which can be seen starting on the northern
edge of Hesiodus, and running westward across Mare Nubium, it appears to pass under the mountains that
separate Cichus and Mercator, continues across the northern edge of Palus Epidemiarum before
disappearing into the mountains north of Capuanus.
This picture is one of a sequence taken every 10 minutes over 2 hours which combine to form an
animation of sunrise (1,114K).
The scale markers are approximately 100 Km north and east.
The picture was taken with a ToUcam attached to my LX200 on 18th April 2005 at 22:14 UT when the Moon was 9.5 days old.
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Date and Time |
18th April 2005 at 22:14 UT |
Camera |
ToUcam 740K |
Telescope |
LX200 at prime focus (FL 2500 mm) |
Capture |
K3CCDTools. High gamma, 1/250", 18% gain, 308 frames |
Processing |
Registax. 117 frames stacked. Wavelets 1-3 = 10 |
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