Contains:  Solar system body or event
Gassendi Crater, Niall MacNeill

Gassendi Crater

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Gassendi Crater, Niall MacNeill

Gassendi Crater

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

On a night of very good seeing I decided to see what sort of resolution was possible when imaging a crater whose size was similar to Jupiter. With the moon 95% full, the crater Gassendi is on the moons limb and could be seen in relief. It is a beautiful, complex and interesting crater on the northern edge of Mare Humorum, the smooth surface of which is seen towards the top of the image. The crater is 110kms in diameter and therefore has an apparent diameter of 60 arc seconds, about 50% larger than Jupiter. It was named for the French astronomer Pierre Gassendi.

This crater was partially filled with lava after the impact as can be seen from the flat floor, with the rim and central peaks sitting proud of the lava flow. A number of rilles criss cross the floor of the crater due to the shrinkage of the lava field.

Gassendi A is the crater that impacted the rim of Gassendi and has an interesting and complex interior and Gassendi B is below it in the image. The beautiful bowl like crater in Mare Humorum at upper right is Gassendi L.

This is an RGB capture so a colour image. I captured 5000 frames at 50 fps over 100 secs for each colour channel.

The resolution of detail is comparable with a planetary image. The resolution of my OTA is ~ 0.5% of the diameter of the crater.

Comments

Histogram

Gassendi Crater, Niall MacNeill