Viewing the Moon

[Hans Tucker]

Stupid question time

I have only ever viewed the Moon whilst it was transiting through the waxing phase to full but never from full through the waning phase. Are the views between the waxing and waning different or is the Moon just the Moon? I thought maybe the how the sunlight reflects off the Moon features during the waxing and waning phases shows the features, to coin a phrase, in a different light.

[OzEclipse]

Yes you are correct. Same surface features, but the different lighting angle changes the appearance of features
joe

[mental4astro]

Yes & no, actually.

It is not as simple as that. The features on any surface are more complex than just just a 'reversing' of the shadows. It doesn't matter if you are looking at the Moon or across a beach here on Earth. The angle of the incident light will reveal different features, hide others, and also just swing around the direction of a shadow.

Take the Straight Wall escarpment. It is visible from roughly the first quarter phase, and reducing in prominence as the Sun swings higher in the lunar sky, until it disappears as there is no longer a shadow cast as the Sun illuminates the escarpment wall.

Riles, rifts, fault lines, etc, all depend on the angle of the incident light to be seen in many instances. Some greatly changing in character and the details that become visible. Craters, domes, volcanos, mountains are all affected in the same way.

Alphanumeric features are totally dependent on a unique angle of incident light upon the surrounding lunarscape to the visible, such as the lunar 'X'. The X is only visible for a few hours at a very specific age of the Moon's phase while it is waxing. This same X is not visible during the waning phase.

The Moon has a lot more to offer than most people think. Main problem is we just tend to glimpse over its surface, instead of really taking our time on just one area at a time. One of my joys while I do a sketch of the Moon is see how the length of shadows change over a couple of hours. This can be sufficient to totally change the appearance of the feature that caught my attention in the first place!

Mental.

[JB80]

If you google "The lunar 100" it is a very good list of 100 different lunar features of varying difficulty to try and observe on the lunar surface. It's a very good way to not only spend some good eyepiece time on the Moon but to also take a bit of time out to understand why and how such features came about in the first place.

Check it out, it was originally a Sky & Telescope article.

[Akwestland]

Hans,

We are very very new to this game and WOW. Whenever we get the scopes out and look at various items I always take some time to look at the moon if it is available. I think I have become a little obsessed with this wonderful structure.

Mental, I always enjoy your comments especially when it comes to the moon, we now have a moon map and I will sit here after observing and look at the moon map to identify what we are looking at. The features do change quite drastically it is great.

Jarrod, Thank you for that google search, I will have a look at that and as I am getting a little obsessed here then it will probably provide some inspiration and destination to identify some of these.

It is such a beautiful item to continually observe, it is just a shame that we will only ever see one half of it. But with the different items to see on a nightly basis due to the different angle of the light it will keep me going for a while.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers,
Andrew.

[hobbit]

I'm with you Andrew. I spend more time looking at the moon than anything else.

[BilliGoatsGruff]

I didn't know there was such a thing! thanks for the heads up :thumbsup:

[OzStarGazer]

Grrr.... I only needed the 27-day old moon to have every day apart from very close to new moon because then the moon is too close to the sun for imaging, and the turbulences this morning were absolutely atrocious!!!! :mad2::sadeyes::mad2: