Hello, Bill and the group,

Thanks for the links on Virtual Atlas of the Moon and Consolidated Lunar
Atlas.

My only problem with VAofM is that the size of the lunar image is much
too small for identifying the smaller craters, and the images of the
craters are what the satellite saw and not what we see through a
telescope, especially when very far from the center of the Moon.

John Westfall has a book out called the Atlas of the Lunar Terminator,
but I find it much too restrictive in what it shows. Craters that well
illuminated but just a few degrees off the terminator are cropped out.
I would prefer to have the familiar craters or features there as
something to tie with the terminator image.

What we really need is a vector-based program that has a 3D model of the
Moon, with all of the elevations of the mountains, craters, and valleys
known to it so that a realistic chart could be printed for the date and
time of observation, perhaps with detail down to 100 or 150x
magnification. Now THAT would be a killer app for someone!

Clear skies,

Roger



Visit the Northeast Florida Astronomical Society website at
www.nefas.org


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There are 2 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. Virtual Atlas of the Moon
From: Bill J Gray <pluto@...>
2. Re: Virtual Atlas of the Moon
From: "gammaboo2001" <GammaBoo@...>


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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 10:28:38 -0500
From: Bill J Gray <pluto@...>
Subject: Virtual Atlas of the Moon

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for mentioning this... I've given it a download, and may
steal
(errrmmm, borrow) an idea or two. The descriptive text of lunar
features
is very nice.

"Lunatics" may also be interested in the (freely-available) images
from
the Consolidated Lunar Atlas:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/cla/menu.html

They aren't perfect (created with a digital camera; a
flatbed-scanned
version would be just about perfect), but they are (as far as I know)
the
best thing currently available.

If somebody with a CCD camera is looking for a project... a nice
one,
in my humble opinion, would be a "CCD Atlas of the Lunar Terminator."
Fit this onto a (650-MByte) CD-ROM, and you could have about 22
MBytes of images for each day of one lunation. Thus, you could
not only get an image of a given part of the moon; you could get it
with something close to the illumination angle you wanted.

I know some folks on this list have automated/robotic scopes...
perhaps you'd consider having the scope, while it's slewing about
collecting asteroids, take an image or two of the moon each night?

-- Bill



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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 15:44:46 -0000
From: "gammaboo2001" <GammaBoo@...>
Subject: Re: Virtual Atlas of the Moon

Another nice site, Bill. Thanks.

Now tell me why I am still trying to take lunar photos with my TV-85
and TV-140...

Chuck Baker
Rockville, MD



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