Five day old Moon. And things are looking up.
To be honest, I was less than happy with the first two days of photography. (The flickr set is over here – 29(.5) days of the Moon.) The resolution was a bit low in my mind, and I couldn’t really identify anything.
A little bit of poking around, though, got me some ideas to tweak my settings, and tonight I think I got a nice image. For the record, these shots are taken with my Canon 20D, my 70-200 IS USM L series Canon lens, and the 2X extender. That gives me an effective focal length of 640mm when you take into account eh 20D’s sensor factor thingy.
Viewing Notes
So tonight, things are groovy. I can actually see, and more importantly, identify things.
On the first night, a three day old moon, all I could really see was Mare Crisium.
On the second night, I could identify most of Mare Fecunditatis and Mare Nectaris.
I was stumped there, not being able to res0lve much else.
Tonight, it all came together. Thre triplet craters of Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina became very obvious. To the southwest, two more craters which, at this point, I shall call Fermat and Pons. And then, the same distance SW, two more, Lindenau and Riccius.
I reserve the right to be corrected on these. They make sense to me now, but I have had a couple of glasses of 10 Mile from California. Having said that, the Rupes Altai, named after the Altai mountains in central Asia, seems also to be visible.
The really exciting thing about this view is something that you can’t possibly see – the site of the Apollo 11 landing, at the Sea of Tranquility. For me it’s simply amazing to be able to see (within about 100 km) the location where man first set foot on this world. The landing site for Apollo 16, in the Descartes Highlands, is coming up on us soon.
All of these names… They are so disconnected and inconsequential if you don’t put them in context. Meaningless, even, the very definition of trivia. But in learning a few names, you have become a member of a very exclusive minority of humanity who knows the major features of the Moon.
Our closest neighhbour.