The Moon by Eye, Binocular and Telescope

On Saturday I did another talk for the Cambridge Young Astronomers. This months topic was our nearest neighbour. I chose what you can see on the Moon by naked eye, binoculars and telescope.

I started by looking at the main seas or Maria on the surface of the moon that you can see with the naked eye. I then went onto looking at lunar craters including Copernicus, Kepler and Tycho. I then showed an image of their location on the moon as well what they look like through a telescope.

Whilst focusing on Tycho I found some amazing images that the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) took of the centre of Tycho, it’s mountain range and then it had an even more zoomed in image of a boulder on the top of the mountain range that was 120m wide.

I then moved onto looking at the Apollo landing sites and looked at Apollo 15 landing site at Hadley Rille with an image that I took on my 8″ RC telescope. I then showed a quick video of the phases of the moon which were sped up to illustrate the best time to view the moon along the terminator line.

I have put a copy of The Moon PowerPoint talk on the downloads page if you want to have a look at it.

Moon Image in Daylight

I managed to get out before the snow set in and the clouds appeared today (Sunday 21st Feb). I went out at about 4pm when it was still light, but the moon appeared directly above me.

I took this image with my cheap refractor but this time I also used my Televue 2x Barlow as well as my Canon 450D camera on ISO800 for about 1/50th exposure. I forgot to add that I also used my 1.25″ Baader Fringe Killer filter.

Click on it to enlarge it.