The Libration Zone in the South-east

The pictures on this page have been reduced to 50% which makes the mouseovers difficult to read.  To see the full-sized images, click here, but be aware that the images total 519K.

This is the far south-east area of the Moon imaged at a time of particularly favourable libration for that area (Latitude -5° 41', Longitude 1° 43').  In the mouseover I have attempted to indicate all the named craters that I can identify in the libration area with a few of the more-prominent craters outside that area for reference.
The picture is a composite of two images taken with a ToUcam attached to my LX200 on 11th May 2005 at about 20:33 UT, when the Moon was 3.3 days old.  The picture of the whole Moon, of which this is a part, can be found here (290K).  The picture was captured in infra-red light about 50 minutes after sunset when the Moon was at an altitude of 24°.

This is an area just north of the picture above. The image was made at first quarter and the libration was -5° 18' in latitude and 7° 12' in longitude, just about as good as it gets for this part of the Moon.  Being at first quarter, the Sun was overhead in the libration zone, so there are few shadows and the image is rather flat.  I exposed it and processed it to emphasise Mare Australis, which is a collection of dark spots rather than an extensive area of lava flows similar to the great maria of the near side.
The picture is a mosaic of seven images, processed to wavelets in RegiStax, assembled in iMerge, and further processed in PhotoImpact.

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