#Online moon atlas how to
#Online moon atlas cracked
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#Online moon atlas series

Here you’ll find a tiny 2.5km ray crater. It’s most prominent to the east and north, but hardly resembles what you’d describe as a classic crater.Ītlas appears to overlap the southern rim of Atlas E, so Atlas E is obviously older than Atlas.Ī particularly lovely, albeit small feature can be seen 85km to the east of the southern edge of Atlas’s rim. The rim of this feature is very badly eroded and best seen when the lighting is oblique. Located north of Atlas and east of Hercules is the 58km ghost crater, Atlas E. Hercules is younger than Atlas at somewhere between 1.1 and 3.2 billion years. The southwest rim is interrupted by 9km Hercules E. Equipment: Orion StarMax 90mm, Skywatcher All View Mount, Expanse ASI 120 MC (CMOS). The region around the Atlas and Hercules craters, by Ronald Piacenti Junior, Norma Observatory, Brasilia-DF, Brazil. This sits squarely within the southern half of Hercules but, despite its size, doesn’t cause much other disruption. There’s a notable intruder to Hercules’s floor in the form of 13km Hercules G.

#Online moon atlas cracked

Hercules also has a terraced rim but unlike the cracked floor inside Atlas, the floor of Hercules appears absolutely smooth apart from a few rounded hills. This is another circular crater which, like Atlas, appears to us as an ellipse as a result of foreshortening. Rim to rim, Hercules lies just 30km to the west of Atlas. Hercules CraterĪfter looking at Atlas, it’s quite amazing how different nearby Hercules appears. There are few craterlets visible on Atlas’s floor through amateur telescopes, the most obvious being a 4.4km example near the northern rim. The rilles that form Rimae Atlas almost appear to spread, like a branching river, north from pyroclastic Atlas South.įurther evidence of volcanism can be seen from several dark, haloed craters spread across Atlas’s floor – these are craters surrounded by smaller pyroclastic flow. The rest of the floor is relatively light in appearance. These are pyroclastic patches, the result of ‘fire fountains’ spouting molten material from below the crater’s floor. An annotated image showing the region around the Atlas and Hercules Craters.

Two dark patches referred to as Atlas North and Atlas South are very obvious when the crater is lit from overhead.

#Online moon atlas series

The delicate series of cracks that crisscross its floor are known as Rimae Atlas. The crater is 2km deep and has a complex floor covered in hills and cracks.Ī lot of its anguished appearance is believed to have come from volcanism. Minimum observing equipment: 2-inch refractorĪtlas is circular in shape and bounded by an intricately terraced rim wall.

#Online moon atlas full

Best time to see: Four days after new Moon (10 & 11 March) and three days after full Moon (23, 24 & 25 March).

Equipment: C11 Edge, Powermate 2.5x, ASI 290mc Facts about Atlas crater Atlas and Hercules by Fernando Oliveira De Menezes, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

#Online moon atlas how to

In this guide we'll take a look at both craters, revealing what you can see in this fascinating region of the lunar surface.įor more info on lunar observing, read our guides on how to observe the Moon and the best features on the Moon. Located next door to 70km Hercules, it makes a contrast to its neighbour through a telescope because of their marked differences. A guide to the Moon's Atlas and Hercules CratersĬrater Atlas is a distinctive feature of the Moon’s northeast quadrant.