19/01/16 - Montes Jura (3 pane mosaic) - Second light.

[Blazar]

Hi all...

Been a bit quiet of late as lots going wrong at the moment (including the shocking weather). Well the 19th gave me a chance to try out the new Edge1100 setup...though with my old camera. The moon was not exactly in one of my favourite phases (how inconsiderate), however I need to check out the scope and make sure all was well. I did a star test and it seemed to show good collimation, though seeing was indifferent, but transparency was meant to be quite good. I decided to have a go anyway and the first runs off of the scope left me a little deflated....not exactly what I was hoping for. ...at that point dinner loomed, so i came in (and left the scope outside for a while....I returned a while later (so the scope had been out for around 4 hours now) and tried again. Now this was much better. it seems these 11 inch scopes need a hell of a lot longer to cool down properly. 

Anyway. I managed to record about 120GB of data and I am now just starting to go through it all.  lots more to come, but I tried to do a close up mosaic of it as some of the detail was amazing. three panes of around 1500 frames each using the 1100 with a x2 barlow.  

Montes Jura is the 300 odd mile long northern wall of Sinus Iridum. it is approx 30 miles wide, and rises to over 18,000 feet in height along its length.  the wall encloses the northern half of the bay and forms an area of over 230,000 square kilometres, the Southern portions of the crater shaped feature have been swallowed by the lava from the Mare. The northern cape (promontorium Laplace) is the larger of the two  capes at approx 7000feet high. The southern cape (Promontorium Heraclides) is a mere 5000 feet high.

The bay seems to be quite flat from our perspective  however the surface actually falls away by almost 500 meters from the Mare (along a179km path), showing how the lava flooded the floor of the crater like formation.

LROC supplied data analysis.

As always thanks for looking.

[xtreemchaos]

great image and imfo Steve, i was only lastnight thinking of imaging the area as it looked so interesting. thanks for sharing,charl.

[laudropb]

Very nice presentation of one of my favourite lunar regions.

[Astro Imp]

Nice to see you back Steve and posting a great image and explanations of a most interesting area.

[Blazar]

Thanks Gents....Its a promising start....just need to now save for the 174...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice work!