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Chamäleon Observatory HOME
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Small Vulcanic Structures on the near side of the
Moon observed with an Earth based medium size Amateur
Telescope
Lunar Domes, Pyroclastic Areas of Deposit, Plateaus,
Megadome Plateaus Sinusoidal Lava Tubes and Floor Fractured
Craters |
Wolfgang Paech + Franz
Hofmann / Last Update: 12.01.2018 / Contact |
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This site shows a large part of the front
of the moon at an intervall of about 24 hours and a moon age from 3.3 to 14.8
days (12 - 100% illumination) with special attention to small structures lunar
volcanism in high resolution.
The orientation of the
images is different from the modern representations in lunar atlases. They are
orientated in the same way as the CCD camera captures the images in the focus
of the telescope - SOUTH is up and EAST is LEFT. The image resolution is on average between 1,000 to
2,000 meters, whereas for some images - depending on the lunar distance, the
position of the details in viewing direction to the earth and the illumination
- it is even under 1,000 meters. Height differences of about 50 m are
visible.
Another lunar atlas showing normal lunar structures such
as craters, rilles, mountains ... we
present here.
Two examples
perfectly illustrate the high image resolution: The "Floor Fractured" crater
Alphonsus with rilles and pyroclastic volcanism and the two
lunar
Cones Isis and Osiris in the Mare Tranquillitatis southwest of the landing
area of Apollo 17. |
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Nearly all images are from 2015, taken
in the months of July, August and September. A few images from the years 2007
to 2014 and 2016 were included due to special illumination situations. With
very few exceptions, the images were taken in the focus of a Celestron C14 (f =
3.900 mm) with a Celestron SkyRis 445M video module. A Baader IR pass filter
was used to optimize the seeing for all recordings. Location of the telescope
were two guest farms in Namibia: the Rooisand Desert Ranch (2007 to 2011) and
from 2013 the Onjala Lodge near Windhoek.
A very small part of the
images was taken at the 430mm (f / 6.8) PlaneWave astrograph of the Rooisand
Desert Ranch, partly recorded with a Baader Q - Turett Barlow lens ( f
approximately 4.500 mm ).
The video streams have been processed with a
standard recording method and a standardized image processing mode. The summed
images were created with the software AviStack 1.8, the final processing was
done in Adobe Photoshop CS 2. The length of each video stream was between 1200
and 1500 frames - depending on the seeing conditions. 12 % of the frames were
added to the final image.
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Why a photographic lunar atlas with a
special look on lunar volcanism? In our opinion, lunar volcanic structures
belong to the most difficult details in the solar system which can be
photographed by amateur astronomers and represent a major challenge for
astrophotographers. There is no other body in the solar system where the
amateur can document volcanic structures in high resolution. If it is the
speech of observation in the image captions, the photographic observation is
meant, because most of the structures are too small for visual observation - or
require very large telescope apertures under excellent seeing conditions.
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More details about our images and the image resolution can be found
here. If required, we also show pictures of the wide-angle
camera of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Height profiles of various
structures are also created on the website of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
All images that do not originate from us are clearly marked. A short but
detailed introduction into features of lunar vulcanism
can be found here (at the moment only available in german
language). |
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Choose one of the following segments: Segment
01: Mare Crisium, Mare Undarum, Geminus, Proclus, Mesalla, Cauchy
Region Segment 02: Mare Fecunditatis, Messier, Petavius,
Langrensus, Furnerius, Vallis Rheita Segment 03: Highland
regions around the craters Janssen, Stöffler und Maurolycus
Segment 04: Western
part of Mare Nectaris, Theophilus, Fracastorius, Piccolomini, Albategnius,
Deslandres, Walter Segment 05: Mare Tranquilitatis, Mare
Serenitatis, Posidonius, Aristillus, Autolycus. Gardner, Jansen, landing site
of Apollo 15+17 Segment 06: Eastern part of Mare
Frigoris, Atlas, Herkules, Endymion, Aristoteles, Eudoxus, Lacus
Mortus Segment 07: Northern part of Mare Imbrium, western part
of Mare Frigoris, Plato, Sinus Iridum Segment 08:
Mare Imbrium, Archimedes, Erathostenes, CoperniCus, Apenninen Segment 09: Mare Nubium, Eastern part Mare Humorum,
Lansberg, M. Riphaeus, Pitatus, Bullialdus Segment
10: Highlands, Tycho, Clavius, Newton, Heinzel, Mee
Segment 11: Western part of Mare Humorum,
Schickard, Gassendi, Crüger, Billy, Grimaldi Segment 12: Oceanus Procellarum, Sinus Roris, Kepler,
Reiner, Marius Hills, Aristarch Plateau
DOWNLOAD: pdf-file with a list of all volcanic structures
of this lunar atlas (only in german
language) |
< © NASA/LRO |
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Concerning the technical data of the images: the theoretical
image resolution depending on the wavelength of the light results for both
telescopes in the following table. |
Wavelength in
nanometer |
Celestron 14, aperture 350mm resolution in
arcseconds |
Planewave Astrograph, aperture 430mm resolution in
arcseconds |
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blue, 400 nm |
0.23 |
0.18 |
green, 550 nm |
0.31 |
0.25 |
red, 680 nm |
0.40 |
0.33 |
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The image scale in the focus of the C14 with the SkyRis 445M arises
to 0.2"/pixel (pxl). For example: At a Moon distance of 367,211 km (diameter of
the Moon = 32.53 arcminutes or 1,952 arcseconds) on 09.28.2015 you can find the
following theoretical values:
1 km on the Moon (in the middle of the
Moon) corresponds to 0.56" or 1" corresponds to1.8 km. Therefore, 1 pixel in
the image corresponds to 375 meters on the Moon (theoretically), practically in
the red wavelength region around 750 meters. These theoretical calculated
values are strongly valid only for a point light source. The field which is
shown in the focus of the Celestron 14 is (slightly) cropped about 5.4 x 4.0
arcmin, corresponding to 324 x 240 arcsec.
On some images objects are
selected, which are not listed in the official lists of volcanic structures,
but morphologically, they are very similar to the known structures. They are
then either labeled with a "?" or marked with the word "putative". There is
also a hint in the corresponding description. |
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Structures of lunar volcanism are very
small (5 to 15 km in diameter) in the most cases. Summit crater (caldera) of
lunar domes, similar to shield volcanoes on earth, have diameters of only 1,000
to 3,000 meters. The usually very small heights of the structures, on average
between 75 and 150 meters, require an extremely low solar elevation, which
means they are only visible a few hours at the terminator
region.
Basic preconditions for
successful observations are therefore:
- low solar elevation at the chosen
structure on the Moon
- for observation: a clear sky and
almost darkness
- very good to excellent seeing
conditions.
Therefore such images require
patience or - as in Namibia often available - a cloudless sky over long periods
of time.
Lunarer volcanism - a
short overview
Like on Earth, the lunar volcanism can be roughly
structured into the following basic types:
- Effusive volcanism
- Intrusive and extrusive
volcanism
- Pyroclastic (explosiv)
volcanism
- a mixture of them.
The following structures arised
from the volcanic activity:
- Lunar Domes/lunar
Cones
- Super-, Megadomes,
Megadomeplateaus
- Lunar pyroclastic
deposits
- Floor fractured crater
(FFC)
- Dark halo crater (DHC, DMD = Dark
mantle deposits) and
- Sinuous rilles
Special cases are
- Lunar Kipukas
- Concentric double craters and
the
- Aristarch plateau
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Literature:
Our website is based on the work of
Raffaello Lena, Maria Teresa Chiocchetta, Mike Wirths, Paolo Lazzarotti, Jim
Phillips, Carmelo Zannelli, Stefan Buda and George Tarsoudis. They are a
loose group of
amateur astronomers, who specialized on the observations of lunar
volcanism.
All geometric data, coordinates, diameter, height and
classification of lunar domes on our website based on their work. It is
summarized and referenced to many scientific results in lunar research in the
book: |
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LUNAR DOMES - Properties and Formation Processes, Raffaello
Lena, Christian Wöhler, James Phillips und Maria Teresa Chiocchetta,
Springer Verlag, 2013, ISBN:
978-88-470-2636-0
The website
of the Geological Lunar Researches Group (GLR) can be found
here and a
list of publications
here. There is also a website with a
list of
lunar domes.
Further literature:
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http://target.lroc.asu.edu/q3/
This is the website with the interactive map of the Moon
of the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiters Team. It provides
direct access to any lunar formation, starting with a scale of 4 km per pixel.
You can zoom in to a magnification of 64 meters per pixel for the images taken
with the wide-angle camera, followed by the image strips of the tele camera
where the scale is up to 1 meter per pixel. In addition, you can switch on
various overlays like digital elevation models. All images that we have
included into this lunar atlas are marked with LRO. General information
on this NASA spacecraft can be found
here.
At http://www.avistack.de you can download the video image
processing program which we have used to process the moon images. It has been
programmed by Dr. Michael Theusner and is freeware. See also our page for image
processing.
Highly recommended literature and lunar
atlases:
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Charles A. Wood: The Modern Moon: A Personal View, Sky Publishing
Corporation, 2005 Charles A. Wood, Maurice Collins: 21st Century Atlas of
the Moon, West Virginia University Press, 2012 Motomaro Shirao, Charles A.
Wood: The Kaguya Lunar Atlas: The Moon in High Resolution, Springer,
2011 |
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W.
Paech, M. Weigand und A. Chu: Fotografischer Mondatlas: 69 Mondregionen in
hochauflösenden Fotos, Oculum, 2010 A. Chu, W. Paech, M. Weigand und
S. Dunlop: The Cambridge Photographic Moon Atlas, Cambridge University Press,
2012 |
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The
following two publications are pdf-files and free for download. Both - Alan
Chus Photographic Moonbook and K.C. Paus Photographic Lunar Atlas for Moon
Observers - are modern milestones in amateur moon observation. Mr. Chu is also
a member of the Hong Kong Astronomical Society and both are observing from Hong
Kong
Alan Chu:
Photographic Moonbook
(version 3.5, edition 2011, 260 pages) K.C. Pau:
Photographic Lunar Atlas for Moon Observers (Second edition
2016, 900 pages) |
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And Last but not least we would
like to thank Mr. Martin Rietze for his support regarding terrestrial
volcanism. He belongs to the world's best photographers of terrestrial
volcanism and is author of some books of this topic.
A visit of his website is
breath-taking. |
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All Images - otherwise marked - and
all Content are © by Franz Hofmann + Wolfgang Paech |
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