This mosaic of the north polar area extends further to the east than the previous one. It was also taken on day 13.4 which is of course only about a day before Full Moon, so the lighting is very flat. The libration was 4° 54' in latitude and 0° 15' in longitude, which is very similar to the earlier picture. The solar inclination, however, was 1.3°, which is almost as large as it gets, but is still less than the libration, so the northern edge of this picture is the terminator, rather than the limb. This effect limits in practice how far we can see over the north pole. I have indicated where I believe the pole is on this picture with an arrow that points down the prime meridian, but I show no other scale markers since they change in direction and length in different parts of the picture. Since the libration in longitude is so small, the prime meridian is straight, and I have orientated the picture so that it runs almost vertically down the picture. I found annotating this image particularly difficult because of the poor contrast and lack of shadows which has caused some craters, quite prominent at other phases, to disappear completely. I hope I have all the names in the right places but do please email me at my address on my home page if you detect any errors. I am fairly confident of my identification of Nansen. This crater is at 95.3 degrees east so is in the libration zone and the libration in longitude is theoretically insufficient to bring it into view. It lies at 81.3 degrees latitude so the libration in latitude may have brought at least parts of it into view. I present the picture in two parts because I managed to miss a small section in the middle so the parts don't quite meet. Click on either image to see the combined picture. To return to the previous page, close this window.
Date and Time
30th April 2007 21:33 to 21:58 UT
Camera
Atik 1-HS
Telescope
LX200 at prime focus with Astronomik green filter
Capture
K3CCDTools. Low gamma, 1/250", 6-700 frames
Processing
Registax. Multi-point alignment, most frames stacked. Wavelet 1-2 = 10
PhotoImpact. Edge enhancement factor 3, gamma 1.5 To return to the previous page, close this window.