First Lights at the Jodrell Plank Observatory 2023

 

02 January 2023. The Moon was waxing gibbous and libration favoured imaging the southern limb. Mare Australe area.
127mm Meade Apo Refractor, x3 Televue Barlow and the QHY5-llc planetary video camera. A stack of 3000 avi frames.

Pipp Stakkert has identified the craters/walled plains  Oken and Lyot in order that 

they can be more easily located on the lunar globe.

 

The only reason we captured this image was to achieve an accurate focus on a bright object before we attempted to capture a video clip of the much dimmer and distant planet Mars. So on the night we did not take much interest in what bit of the Moon we were capturing. 

Since then all members of the Jodrell Plank Observatory staff have succumbed to post Christmas viruses and consequently little imaging work has been accomplished. Bad weather has also played its part in keeping the team indoors.

When we finally got around to processing the lunar clip we weren't sure which bit we had captured. This may seem silly but the Moon's phase (how obliquely it's illuminated by the sun) and it's libration (the Moon appears to wobble and from time to time presents a bit more of its surface at the limb) makes quite a difference to how lunar features appear. We thank PeterW and Mr Spock from SGL for their advice and Nasa for their imagery.

The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth and so presents more or less the same face towards us. As a consequence roughly circular craters and lava flooded plains located close to the lunar limb appear elliptical. If we viewed Mare Australe from directly above it would look quite different. We can of course do this as NASA generously shares its imagery from countless automated space probes and the Apollo programme.

Mare Australe from above. Credit: Nasa Gov

 I particularly like the following image taken by the crew of Apollo 15 looking towards the South Pole as the craft orbited above the lunar surface.

It is quite interesting to view the whole Lunar surface from a different perspective. The following NASA image is the Moon as seen from approximately above the South Pole.

Pipp Stakkert has coloured and identified the locations of Oken and Lyot.

And finally what all the focussing on the Moon was for our best image of Mars this season with the surface albedo feature 'Syrtis Major' just coming into view. Mars disc is now smaller and just beginning to show some phase. There is also quite a bit of carbon dioxide haze and cloud about.