Contains:  Solar system body or event
The "Lunar X", KHartnett

The "Lunar X"

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

I was alerted by a friend that the phenomenon called the "Lunar X" would be visible on the evening of March 20th from my location. This is an event lasting for a few hours with the moon near its first quarter phase, when the rims of the craters Purbach, La Caille, and Blanchinus poke up into the sunlight forming what appears to be an "X" shape along the terminator. As it happens, the timing of this particular occurrence made it best visible when the moon was in the bright twilight just after sunset. Wanting to have my scope polar aligned, I waited a bit until my Polemaster device could see Polaris and a few fainter stars. By the time I took images, the visibility period for the "X" was drawing to a close. In hindsight, I should have just targeted the moon and taken some individual exposures.

I engaged the "5X" button in the Planetary mode of BYEOS and stacked the best 20% of 3600 frames.

Comments

Histogram

The "Lunar X", KHartnett