Lunar South Pole Area

[John]

Under last nights excellent seeing conditions and with a favourable lunar libration I managed to capture an image of the south polar limb of the moon. These were discussed briefly in the "What did you see tonight ?" thread in the general observing section.

Having done a bit more research today I have managed to find an annotated image of this area of the moon, this time made in 2007, by Charles A Wood, the co-author of the excellent "21st Century Atlas of the Moon". I have cropped and re-orientated my image to match that of Charles's image and I can see that I have managed to capture a number of the mountain peaks and craters that he has labelled. The crater Drygalski is Lunar 100 #94 and the Leibniz Mountains (the ones designated M1, 3, 4 & 5 I think) are #96. I'm pleased with this from a simple mobile phone snapshot and to see this part of the moon in some detail.

The Leibniz Mountains are on the rim of the South Polar-Aitken Basin which is a huge 2,500km diameter ancient impact feature.

Charles A Wood's 6th January 2007 image:

My 17th January 2022 image:

 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2022 by John

[Alkaid]

That’s brilliant John. Great capture!

[John]

13 minutes ago, Alkaid said:

That’s brilliant John. Great capture!

Thanks - I only do a few snaps a year so I make the most of it when one comes off !

 

[Nik271]

Nice! The Moon libration was very favourable and  allowed us to look directly into the south pole basin. The Leibnitz mountains as observed by Schroter were probably in the foreground of your image: starting with M8 and a few others to the left of them. The problem is that over the years people have been trying to indentify exactly what Schroter saw when he named them. I found this drawing by Whitaker from 1954 which has the M peaks but also further left lists Leibnitz alpha beta, gamma, delta and epsilon with a question mark.

 

If we believe his chart I think I can identify Leibnitz alpha beta, gamma and delta on your  photo:

 

I wonder why IAU discontinued the names, these are after all the highest mountains on the Moon.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Nik271

[John]

59 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

Nice! The Moon libration was very favourable and  allowed us to look directly into the south pole basin. The Leibnitz mountains as observed by Schroter were probably in the foreground of your image: starting with M8 and a few others to the left of them. The problem is that over the years people have been trying to indentify exactly what Schroter saw when he named them. I found this drawing by Whitaker from 1954 which has the M peaks but also further left lists Leibnitz alpha beta, gamma, delta and epsilon with a question mark.

 

If we believe his chart I think I can identify Leibnitz alpha beta, gamma and delta on your  photo:

 

I wonder why IAU discontinued the names, these are after all the highest mountains on the Moon.

Thanks Nik, very interesting

This is one of Charles Wood's "LPOD" pages which covers this area and mentions Whitaker's work:

https://www2.lpod.org/wiki/January_6,_2007

It's a little like the early expeditions to the Himalaya's, trying to work out which peak is which !

 

 

Edited January 19, 2022 by John

[Saganite]

Really fine image John ....👍

[F15Rules]

Very interesting John, and great photo.

To be honest, I'm not a serious lunar observer, I don't know the names of many features and while I do like looking at the moon in it's younger phases, I confess I am always quite happy when the moon disappears and the dark nights reappear!🤭.

All that said, I have found this thread really interesting, and the quality of your image really shows how good the seeing must have been the night you took the photo..and really interesting to see quite clearly a part of the moon, the limb, that many of us might up until now have used only to check for CA in our scopes!😂

Great stuff!

Dave

[Alan White]

Lunar can be devisive, its a Marmite thing for us astronomers.
In my camp, it's a love it and I enjoy oportunities to observe it well,
something that my binoviewer is now allowing more easily on the eye.

Thanks to all who have posted in this thread, thoroughly enlightening.

[Nik271]

Just found this: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=5074&button=recent

Leibnitz Beta is now officially Mons Mouton.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Nik271