Well, after long absence, I have a chance to watch the Moon this week. Anyway while meandering around the terminator tonight with my 8" Discovery PDHQ Dob looking for the "lunar neckless" ;-), one crater caught my attention: crater Mee (I had quite a difficult time identifying the name of this seemingly obscured crater). The one feature that strikes me (not Mee ;-) really hard was the small white
circular rays(?). See this picture from the Lunar Orbitter.
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Moon-Sketches/Mee-1-PDHQ.jpg
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/lunar_orbiter/images/img/iv_142_h2.jpg
I observed from 9:15pm (4:15UT 05/01) - 11pm using my 6mm TV Radian (200x) with some of time spent on Jovian lunar transit ;-). Later I zeroed in with my 6mm and 5mm (250x) TMB SuperMonocentric eyepieces.
Here's the lunar orbiter picture to refer to for the discussion that follows.
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Moon-Sketches/Mee-2-PDHQ.jpg
When the seeing steady, I immediately saw two crisp tiny craterlets (bottom 2 blue arrows). But what's this? The Radian was giving an impression of a "pit" over the white spot. After a while and still couldn't make out what they were, I resorted to my sharpest eyepiece: the TMB SuperMono. Because of its 30d AFOV, I don't like
to use it on the undriven Dob normally. With the 5mm TMB and nudging extreme tolerance ;-), I was able to see what looked like a pit with a good degree of certainty, though it disappeared and reappeared with the seeing. Make no mistake; in the Orbiter's image, these features looked big but they were exceedingly small at 200x and 250x! For
example, ME Q craterlet (the largest blue craterlet in the picture) is only 1km x 1km in size!
I also check around the area to make sure I could see some of the other features as well. The features in pink and purple were very difficult. Remarkably, the 8-incher also revealed the darker color in the floor of the partial crater E (marked with purple polygons). Also, the dark gray color of the part of the crater Hainzel (top
righthand corner in the image) seems to impart an impression of a "sea horse".
As this white feature reminded me of the dark volcanic features inside Crater Alphonsus, I took the Orbiter image and reverse the color.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/lunar_orbiter/images/img/iv_108_h2.jpg
Sure enough, it looked white just like the white feature in Mee! Don't believe Mee ;-)? Try it and let us know what you see. Also, because white on very light gray Moon can be difficult to see, I wonder if reverse the color can be a new way to finding more of these white features.
So was it me that see the pit or was the pit not in Mee ;-)?
Enjoy,
Ron B[ee]
circular rays(?). See this picture from the Lunar Orbitter.
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Moon-Sketches/Mee-1-PDHQ.jpg
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/lunar_orbiter/images/img/iv_142_h2.jpg
I observed from 9:15pm (4:15UT 05/01) - 11pm using my 6mm TV Radian (200x) with some of time spent on Jovian lunar transit ;-). Later I zeroed in with my 6mm and 5mm (250x) TMB SuperMonocentric eyepieces.
Here's the lunar orbiter picture to refer to for the discussion that follows.
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Moon-Sketches/Mee-2-PDHQ.jpg
When the seeing steady, I immediately saw two crisp tiny craterlets (bottom 2 blue arrows). But what's this? The Radian was giving an impression of a "pit" over the white spot. After a while and still couldn't make out what they were, I resorted to my sharpest eyepiece: the TMB SuperMono. Because of its 30d AFOV, I don't like
to use it on the undriven Dob normally. With the 5mm TMB and nudging extreme tolerance ;-), I was able to see what looked like a pit with a good degree of certainty, though it disappeared and reappeared with the seeing. Make no mistake; in the Orbiter's image, these features looked big but they were exceedingly small at 200x and 250x! For
example, ME Q craterlet (the largest blue craterlet in the picture) is only 1km x 1km in size!
I also check around the area to make sure I could see some of the other features as well. The features in pink and purple were very difficult. Remarkably, the 8-incher also revealed the darker color in the floor of the partial crater E (marked with purple polygons). Also, the dark gray color of the part of the crater Hainzel (top
righthand corner in the image) seems to impart an impression of a "sea horse".
As this white feature reminded me of the dark volcanic features inside Crater Alphonsus, I took the Orbiter image and reverse the color.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/lunar_orbiter/images/img/iv_108_h2.jpg
Sure enough, it looked white just like the white feature in Mee! Don't believe Mee ;-)? Try it and let us know what you see. Also, because white on very light gray Moon can be difficult to see, I wonder if reverse the color can be a new way to finding more of these white features.
So was it me that see the pit or was the pit not in Mee ;-)?
Enjoy,
Ron B[ee]
