CAS - Richard E.

Richard Edmonds

A Study of The Lunar X

We had broken clouds with haze last night but I was determined to capture an image of the lunar "X" near the crater Mutus. I took these movie clips through that haze. What I got is a credit to shooting movie clips with a tremendous number of frames being available, stacking a small percentage of the best, and processing them in Photoshop.

Lunar "X"
© 2014 Richard Edmonds

"X" slightly below crater Mutus near terminator at about 4:30 on clock dial. MVI_2667: Movie Clip 1920 x 1080 pixels, stack of 37 frames, processed in Registax and Photoshop 6.0 Canon 60Da. Meade 10" f/6.3 LX/200/GPS, Prime Focus with 2X barlow.

Shooting movie crop with its electronic increase in magnification was really pushing seeing conditions but the features which lend themselves to create an apparent 'X' are more visible. "X" slightly below crater Mutus. MVI_2665: Movie Crop 640 x 480 pixels, processed in Registax and Photoshop 6.0.

Glenn Chapel, Contributing Editor for Astronomy Magazine, plans to use my observations of this lunar "X" over the past year with some other peculiar lunar features for an article in Astronomy Magazine. He wanted several independent observations of it and a year long study of the effect of lunar libration and phasing. With a 2/3 day old moon (past full moon) I have missed observing it only once in the last year due to weather.

( That article was indeed written by Glenn Chaple and published on page 64 of the December, 2015 issue of Astronomy Magazine. )

This is my original observation from 27 Jun 2013.