Monday, June 21, 2010

Bay of Rainbows

Another great night of Lunar viewing.
First quarter plus three days:



I took that at 5:30PM.
Here's tonights:



As the Moon approaches full, the rays emanating from Tycho become evident. If you look closely, you can see a ray spans all the way across Mare Serenitatis; that's almost from Southern pole to the Northern one!
Tycho is one of the youngest craters. I guess it's because the rays cover almost everything else. It's about 100 million years old.
The rays of Copernicus can also be seen.
Up North, we have a couple of things:



On the border of Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Rains, and Mare Frigoris, Sea of Cold, we have the crater Plato.
You can find a listing of Mare here.
You can find Plato for it is fairly dark compared to the surrounding area.
Then there is Sinus Iridum.
Bay of Rainbows.
I don't know about you but I find that name particularly romantic.
Not in the amorous sense, but in the way I can imagine standing on the Moon somewhere in Sinus Iridum and seeing a rainbow appear overhead.
A rainbow against the dark of space.
It also happens to look like an actual bay.
Of sorts.
Anyways, Sinus Iridum is actually a crater formation that was flooded. It's about 260km in diameter.
The ring of mountains that border it is Montes Jura.
Moon factoid:
Based upon rocks gathered during the Apollo missions, the Moon is thought to be 4.2 billion years old.
Best guess on our solar system: 5 billion years old.

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