My first steps on the Lunar 100

Whilst discussing the moon on the Central Scotland Observers Group forum one of the members mentioned the Lunar 100 as a potential mission for people to undertake. For those of you who don’t know, the Lunar 100 is a list of the Moon's one hundred most interesting regions to observe as described in the April 2004 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine.

There is actually a handy check-list of the Lunar 100 on the Highlands Astronomical Society website along with a nice little diagram showing where on the moon they all are which you can get to via this link.

Anyway, the first three targets on the list are as follows:

L1 - Moon
L2 - Earthshine
L3 - Mare/highland dichotomy

These are all pretty easy for anyone to just go out and see with their naked eye but I thought I would try and grab a picture my compact camera through the 25mm Eyepiece on my telescope.

It isn’t the best to be honest and I don’t think you can make out any Earthshine but I think we can all agree that it is the Moon and the light and dark contrast of the Mare and Highlands is clearly present.

After ticking off these three easy targets in the list I decided to work my way through a few other features on the list. The first of which was L10 - Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") which is a lunar mare that is 555 km (345 mi) in diameter. There are some lovely clear craters in this mare but my favourite is the crater Picard, the reason for this is simply because the name makes me think of Captain Picard from Star Trek.

My next target was L12 – Proclus which is a crater located to the west of Mare Crisium which has an asymmetric ray system whose features suggest an oblique impact at a low angle. If you look at the image below of L10 and L12 that I captured you can see the rays actually extending into Mare Crisium itself.

My final target of the night was L25 – Messier & Messier A which are two craters located in the Mare Fecunditatis (“Sea of Fertility"). These two crater are lined up with each other with two near linear rays extending westward for Messier A. It is actually theorised that Messier crater was formed by an impact at a very low angle, and that Messier A could have formed following a rebound by the impacting body

My attempt at capturing Messier and Messier A is shown below and is quite obvious due to its two linear rays.

I did attempt to use my 2x barlow to get a closer picture of these two craters but as usual with my barlow it wasn't very good. The more I try and use it the more I realise I probably need to change it sooner rather than later!

So overall I have enjoyed my introduction into the Lunar 100 and look forward to continuing my exploration of the lunar surface in the future. It at least means that I won’t have to groan in dismay as much when the moon is ruining the view of other objects in the sky.