A little closer to Home

Well, the moon is getting fuller by the day,which sheds so much light on these humid skies that most of the deep sky stuff is basically invisible. So what's an astronomer to do, you ask? (Thank you for asking.) We look at the brighter objects. Mostly, that's solar system objects. I was hoping to get an image of Jupiter, but it turned out so poorly that I decided it was better to recycle the memory locations in the computer. It was BAD.

The moon was a different story, however. I imaged three areas on the 12^th, which meant I imaged with the terminator more easterly than I usually do; I usually start imaging around 1^st quarter. The reason is that the moon is over the roof of the observatory, which causes that already unsteady air to be even more so. This time, however, I got lucky; the air wasn't much worse than normal, so I gave it a try. What you see below is image (processed, in PIPP and Registax 6 if any astronomers are reading), and the same image which has been annotated to show some interesting areas. Information presented was from Virtual Moon Atlas, which I highly recommend.

The numbers are a few of the more interesting areas and are as follows:

1. Mare Humboldtianum. Situated in the zone of librations. (The oversimplified explanation of librations is that the moon, while presenting the same “face” to us all the time, will “rock”, back and forth a little from time to time. When the moon rocks one way (like a rocking chair type rock), we can see a little more of whats on one of the edges. That extra area we can see is the zone of librations. In this case, the moon has rocked a little westerly, so more of the eastern edge is visible than “normal”. ) The sea (Mare) is about 97 miles by 97 miles in area. It is named after Alexander von Humboldt, a 19^th century German naturalist and explorer.
2. Crater Atlas. It's about 53 miles in diameter and about 9100 feet deep. Yes, it's that Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
3. Crater Hercules. About 42 miles in diameter and 9700 feet deep. The smaller crater inside Hercules is called Hercules G, the smaller still crater on the southern (actually south west ) rim is Hercules E. “G” is about 8 miles in diameter and about 4100 feet deep, while “E” is about 5 miles in diameter. I don't have a depth (or actually height of the walls) for “E”.
4. This is a “twofer”. The crater is in the middle of a lake. The crater is Burg, which is about 24 miles in diameter and about 6700 feet deep. The lake is Lacus Mortis, the Sea of Death (sounds like a good entry for October 31^st). It's about 91 miles by 91 miles. It's also too deep in shadow to see much else.
5. This crater was so prominent I thought you might just want to know about it. It's called Endymion and it's about 76 miles in diameter, about 13900 feet deep. Apparently, Endymion was a Greek mythological shepherd who bewitched Selene. Who knew?

The last two are hopefully easily recognizable. Saturn I'm sure you will recognize. The lower one is Mars. Both are in the early morning sky, in the constellation of Scorpio.