St George Crater

[John]

Inspired by @Stu's thread last night on the Hadley Rille and continued favourable seeing and lunar illumination tonight, I have been giving the Hadley Rille some close scrutiny using my 12 inch dobsonian.

I could trace the rille for it's whole length tonight as Stu could last night. This is his thread:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/376134-hadley-rille-looking-fantastic-20th-april-2020/?tab=comments#comment-4076070

The area surrounding the Apollo 15 landing site was very nicely illuminated and, for the first time that I can recall, I could make out the crater St George on the western facing slopes of the Mons Hadley Delta overlooking a meander of the Hadley Rille.

The ejected material surrounding St George crater was visited and sampled by James Irwin and David Scott in the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The crater is 2.42km in diameter and lies 4km south west from the Apollo 15 landing site.

This was a nice spot and showed how steady the seeing was tonight, in between puffs of wind. I was using 338x magnification.

St George is behind James Irwin as he loads up the LRV in this photo:

 

 

 

 

[Stu]

Great stuff John. My night was not so good tonight, the seeing was not what it was last night so Hadley was a struggle, only just visible in parts.

A question, I saw a small dark patch near the Apollo 15 landing site which I haven’t noticed before. Did you see this and do you know what it is?

Thanks for the report anyway, a nice and interesting read! 👍

[John]

27 minutes ago, Stu said:

A question, I saw a small dark patch near the Apollo 15 landing site which I haven’t noticed before. Did you see this and do you know what it is?

 

I didn't notice this myself Stu but I was concentrating on the area where the rille goes around the foot of the Mons Hadley rather than the flat plain where the LEM touched down. You might have seen shadows caused by either the North Complex or South Cluster formations which are a few km either side of the landing site ?

 

 

[PXR-5]

John, that's amazing!

[Mr Spock]

Good seeing here too. Though only using a 120mm achro so the kind of detail you have isn't there for me. Still a good session though.

[Mariner74]

Seeing was a little inconsistent here in south west Devon, but managed a couple of decent hours along with my brother and sister-in-law taking their first look through my WO binoviewer in a 330 flexi-tube. Their wow-reactions were a joy to behold and I let them sweep away as I tried to point out the obvious. Outstanding highlights for them included, Copernicus, Eratosthenes and Clavius. For me it was the myriad of small craters in and around Stadius that kept popping in and out of view, in the end I wasn't sure if some were a figment of my imagination or genuine. Having said that the sheer scale of the moon in the FOV is always breathtaking.

Cheers, Mike 

[John]

Thanks for the feedback folks

Last nights observing prompted me to have a look through some Apollo 15 mission information. Amazing to think that it all happened 50 years ago this year. I was 11 years old and very heavily influenced by the Apollo programme which is why I guess I'm here now

I'd forgotten that this was the mission which included the hammer vs feather experiment:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/329/the-apollo-15-hammer-feather-drop/

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by John