Dave's Astronomy Pictures - Aristarchus Plateau, 12 January, 2006

This image shows the enigmatic region of the Aristarchus plateau. This is a raised area in the western side of the moon that stands out quite distinctly from the mare area around it (Northern Oceanus Procellarum). The plateau gets its name from the crater Aristarchus, which is notable for its very high brightness as well as radial dark features on the inner crater wall. The nearby Herodotus, a similarly-sized crater, is filled with lava, which makes the crater much darker than its neighbour and which presumably made its entry via the promenant Vallis Schroeter which snakes across the plateau terminating at that crater. The AVIs were captured through my home-made IR-pass filter with the ToUCam Pro on my 250mm f/4.8 newtonian and 5x Powermate. I stacked 200 frames from each of 4 AVIs using Registax 3. iMerge was used to construct the mosaic.
Move the mouse over the image to see feature names, move it out to see the undecorated picture.



Move the mouse over the image to see feature names, move it out to see the undecorated picture.
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