Clavius: Huge Crater in the Southern Highlands
The second largest crater on the visible side of the moon gets lost in the jumble of the Southern Highlands.
Observer Comments
| Target Description | Clavius is an ancient crater in the Southern Highlands. Nearly round in orbiter images, its location close to the SSW limb gives it an ovoid appearance due to perspective foreshortening. It is the second largest crater on the visible side of the moon, but its walls are heavily degraded, and over the years it has collected many secondary craterlets which we highlight here. In my closeup image, the largest "craterlet" just west (left) of the C in Clavius is Clavius D. The even larger crater north of "Cla" is named Porter. The similarly sized crater SW of the "C" is Rutherfurd. |
| Image Capture Description | Technically, this is the best lunar observation in this submission (at least so far). It takes advantage of the EdgeHD at full 2032mm focal length and 294 camera. This was my first experience with SharpCap's real-time lucky imaging. I had turned to it out of desperation because wildfire smoke had ruined multiple observing nights for much of the summer. Smoke turned the original image bright yellow (I converted it to grayscale). Despite the poor transparency, the combination of much longer focal length, lucky-image stacking, and wavelet sharpening delivers a much more detailed image than any of the Seestar captures. |
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| Date and Time Observed | 2024-09-13 21:56:00 |
| Phase Age | 10.5 days |
| Lunar Phase | Waxing Gibbous |
| Illumination | 78% |
| Conditions | Transparency: Poor. Seeing: Good. |
| Obs. Lat/Long | 42° 17', 073° 57' |
| Capture Software | SharpCap |
| Capture Type | Real-time lucky imaging with wavelet sharpening |
| Instrument | EdgeHD 8" f10-2,032mm FL |
| Camera | ASI294MC-Pro |
| Capture Details | Approximately 20 images stacked 50ms exposures |
| Post Processing | Leveled and sharpened in Affinity Photo |