Australian Sky & Telescope — July 2017

58 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE July 2017

Take a telescopic tour of 4 billion years of Solar System history.

EVERY MONTH WE WATCH THE MOONmorph

throughitssequenceofphases—fromnewtofulland

back to new. During this 29½-day-long cycle, our satellite

orbits around Earth, and we see its disk become sunlit from

different angles. Day by day, the line that divides lunar day

and night, called the terminator, gradually marches across the

Moon’s face.

And what an interesting face it has! Over time we’ve come NASA GODDARD / ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

amazing Moon features

to appreciate that the lunar surface preserves geologic events

that occurred throughout the Solar System’s 4½-billion-year

history. And guess what? You can see much of that evidence

easily with even a small telescope. So here’s a list of 25 lunar

features of all types that you can track down at your leisure.

Use the map above to locate them; they’re ordered from lunar

east to west, so you can start looking for them soon after new

Moon and continue until full Moon and thereafter.

FEATURES APLENTY

This composite of Lunar

Reconnaissance Orbiter images reveals

the Moon’s varied surface features.

li i

ili

Tc

J

Serpentine Ridge Reiner Gamma

Fra Mauro

Schiller

Proclus

Altai Scarp

si i

i ir

r

II

I

ri

I

II

i

ter s

NE MT

PENNINE MT

lin

valley

Alpine

Valley

lli

3

4

2

7

12

11

10

17

23

18

24

19

20

25

15

16

LUNAR SHOWCASE

9

M^8

MAARREE FFRRIIGGOORRIISS

25