An usual lunar portrait with a quite unusual guest...

[Gladiator]

Greetings to everybody,

Last lunar image taken on Aug. 12, 2009 which nicely portraits a very familiar crater formation: Stofler (middle-top on the image), Licetus (bottom-left corner) and Maurolycus (on the limb) completely filled with shadow.

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/2010...-sorpresa.html

Playing with the histogram, I was courious enough to look more in depth into Maurolycus crater and I got a nice surprise indeed!
The ghost of the crater floor suddenly took its classical form as the Sun light was coming from the right!
In a short, a waxing crater inside a waning Moon! Amazing!
The image on the right (Jan. 17, 2005) is showing the typical Maurolycus floor, the enhanced image on the left is basically showing the same reliefs and the same depressions as the light is coming from the right!

I didn't see something like this any time before, nor in any place on the web!
I'd dare to call it as "self moonshining" because the Moon is illuminating itself through a spreaded light coming from a crater rim.

Last, this image is for those are still believing to a tubeless telescope as home of spreaded light coming all around from a subject as wide as the Moon.That's my answer.

Thank you for your attention.
More to follow.

[Dennis]

Hi Paolo

An interesting investigation with some quite intriguing results. It seems that there remains much to be discovered and understood with the interplay of light and shadows on lunar features.

It still surprises me just how many amateur astronomers find our Moon a nuisance rather than an object of beauty.

Cheers

Dennis

[DavidU (Dave)]

I can't get the image to open

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

David,

its a little tricky, you have to go down to the third link

Try this

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/wp/w..._0207_lazz.jpg

Cheers

Chris

[Gladiator]

Dennis,

I 101% agree with you!!

Thank you for your comments and sorry for the tricky thread.

[AlexN]

Awesome Paolo,

Dennis is right, I for one, being primarily a deep sky photographer, find the moon to be a nuisance, however When I used to own an 11" SCT and a planetary imaging camera, the Moon was one of my favorite things in the night sky...