Thursday, 22 November 2012

The lunar city?

Well as usual in the British Isles, it has been cloudy. Very cloudy. Especially when the moon is out of the way. Anyway, I haven't blogged for a while, and was browsing some videos I recently took with the ImagingSource video camera, attached to the Celestron 9.25" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. I turned from Jupiter to the Moon on the 2nd November and found some beautifully interesting areas. I recorded 30 seconds of video around the rather disturbed 'square' area close to crater Aristarchus near the left edge of the moon. Oceanus Procellarum is to the bottom. In this image, with the sun high above the lunar surface, the terrain has a darker, browner appearance than the surrounding land and the brightness of Aristarchus really stands out. With Vallis Schröteri running across the square and various rilles and ridges in it, the area gives the impression of a city. Straight lines appear to fly around the whole image like jet contrails. Moving to the upper right from the volcanic looking Aristarchus, you come to the strange arc shaped feature Prinz, then Montes Harbinger. These mountains border the lunar sea Mare Imbrium. The video was selected, stacked and sharpened in Registax 6.