Managed to spot and photograph Mare Orientale this morning from Kendal... must have been -4 or -5 deg C but worth it

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2012/12/0...ientale-spotted

I finally found my Mare Orientale photos.
Back in August 2009, I used my Canon A40, held up to the eyepiece of my 200mm Dobsonian telescope. Settings: F 4.8, 1/250 second, 16mm lens.

Stu, I really loved your blog post. This part was especially thought-provoking:

"Wow… imagine that… imagine if the Moon actually looked like that in our sky… how would our religions and faiths have been shaped if the rising Full Moon had looked like a big, bloated, bloodshot eye staring down at us from the heavens…?"

I agree, that picture of what the moon would look like in our sky if turned around is almost... shocking. Thanks for that great post.

If the 'Eastern Sea' were visible from Earth, quite a few images in popular culture would have looked rather different over the years . . .

Click to view attachment

Without a telescope it would only look like a dot, Mare Crisium-sized, not very dramatic.

But not to worry - the ancient Egyptian symbol of the eye of Horus was thought of as being visible on the Moon - Mare Imbrium was the eye, surrounded by a lighter circle (from Gruithuisen to Plato, the Alps, Apennines, then the bright ejecta of Copernicus, Kepler and Aristarchus), and another dark ring (Frigoris, serenitatis, etc, back to Procellarum). The traditional Eye of Horus had a dark shading towards where the falcon's beak would be - it's Mare Nubium - and a ragged or feathery extension facing away from that - the eastern maria. Many depictions are stylized, but some are detailed enough to see the pattern properly. The mythology associated with Horus makes the lunar connection very clear.

So a major religion was partly shaped by the notion of the Moon being the eye of a god. But they didn't build their own rockets to go look at it.

Phil

Well, that's no fun. I thought Optimus Prime was up there dancing 'round a monolith because the Egyptians sent them there through a stargate or something along those lines.

Coming up on another good opportunity for viewing Mare Orientale.
https://bkellysky.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/...ap-of-our-moon/
http://packerlighting.com/Lunar_Articles/M...cle%205of6.html

Thanks for the link to the original 1962 Hartmann and Kuiper paper! It's amazing what they accomplished with the earth-based photography. Here's a screengrab from that paper- they pretty much had Orientale figured out. When I was a graduate student at the Lunar and Planetary Lab in the 1980s they still had the projection tunnel in the basement that Hartmann had used for these projections.

John

Click to view attachment

A favorable tilt of the Moon toward Earth to see the edges of Mare Orientale is going to occur October 2nd and 3rd, and November 1st. The Moon will be a thin crescent, which I have found difficult to photograph with detail.
Links via my old blog post on the subject:
https://bkellysky.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/...ap-of-our-moon/

Also, re Phil's post on the subject of seeing the 'eye' if it was pointed toward Earth:
"Without a telescope it would only look like a dot, Mare Crisium-sized, not very dramatic."

I wonder if, pre-telescope days, people with very acute eyesight might see more detail. It might have started a controversy akin to the 'canals on Mars' debate, except the 'eye' would be really visible to some viewers and discounted by others with lesser vision (or lesser imagination?).
bob

Good point. I was thinking only of the albedo markings, but actually as the terminator passed over the basin I think it is quite possible hat the circular arrangement of major scarps and mountain rings might be glimpsed.

Phil