The image below shows the very interesting region of crater Marius (center) and surroundings. The second imposing crater in the image is Reiner (bottom) with it’s close companion -Reiner Gamma, a lunar formation west of Reiner with a higher albedo compared to it’s immediate surroundings. The entire image is filled with domes and rimae, and was proposed as a landing site for one of the Apollo Moon landings.
The most striking rima runs for a long distance in the upper part of the image, and it’s called Rima Marius. Towards it’s Western end (left) it almost meets another smaller rima. The second largest rima in the image is called Rima Suess, which is visible in the lower-right part of the image. There are also other smaller rimae towards the West of Marius, in between the domes.
The mosaic is made out of two images, each a 1800 frames stack, on the night of March 13, 2014 with a C 11 SCT @F/20 and a ASI120MM camera with IR-pass (685nm) filter. The seeing was variable, from 4 to 6/10.
To give this area a better view, I’ve corrected it for perspective, to show how the dome-field would look if someone would land in the area.
The second image from this post was selected as LPOD for March 16, 2014.
Max
(March 15, 2014)
maximus photography 