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8×56 BINOCULARSseem ancient by earthly standards, but only
a handful of large, near-side lunar craters
are thought to be younger.
From Copernicus, nudge your scope
south-southwestward to Reinhold, then on
to Lansberg. Reinhold and Lansberg are of
similar size (42 and 38 kilometres in diam-
eter, respectively), yet if you examine them
carefully, you’ll notice they’re quite differ-
ent in appearance. Whereas Lansberg has a
central mountain peak complex, Reinhold
is essentially flat-floored. Of the two, Lans-
berg is the “normal” one—a crater this size
shouldhave a central mountain. So why
doesn’t Reinhold? We might suppose Rein-
hold has been filled in by ejecta from Coper -
nicus or some other source, but this seems
unlikely given that it’s as deep as Lansberg.
Possibly the material underlying Reinhold
had some influence on Reinhold’s ability
to form the expected peak. The truth is, we
just don’t know. Also worthy of inspection
is Reinhold B, which spans a mere 27 kilo-
metres. It’s much shallower than Reinhold
and appears to be considerably older. If you
have steady seeing conditions, try to spotfour-kilometre-wide Reinhold A, lying in-
side the rim of Reinhold B.
Now draw a line from Reinhold to Lans-
berg, then make a right-angle turn east-
ward, covering the same distance, and
you’ll arrive at the place where Apollo 12
set down. The exact spot is on a relatively
smooth stretch of mare located between
two patches of lighter highland terrain.
Under the right illumination conditions,
you can see the faint Copernicus ray touch-
ing the site. There aren’t any conspicuous
features at the landing spot itself; the largest
nearby crater is seven-kilometre-wide Fra
Mauro B, 60 kilometres to the southeast.
The terminator is favourably positioned
near the region on November 6 and 20 and
December 6 and 19. If you want to cele-
brate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 12,
have a look on the night of November 19
—50 years to the day that Alan Bean and
Pete Conrad landed their lunar module
Intrepid on the Moon.✦Gary Seronik is this magazine’s editor and a
lifelong lunaphile.GROUND TRUTH Apollo 12 astronaut Alan
Bean and the lunar module Intrepid are shown
on the dusty surface of Oceanus Procellarum
(Ocean of Storms) in this panorama made from
a sequence of individual photos taken by Pete
Conrad. COURTESY NASA
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS 31GREAT
GIFT IDEA!