The week of January 1-7 takes us from Day 21 to Day 26. This week we will highlight the Catena Davy viewable on Tuesday night and found in the SW quadrant of the Field Map.
Catena Davy: [SW/L9; L=7°W] This fascinating moon crater chain was made when a comet or asteroid was torn into pieces by the gravitational pull of the Earth or the Moon. The alignment of smaller pieces flying through space then slammed into the Moon in machine-gun fashion, leaving a trail of small craters in a straight line. The largest of these craterlets is only a few miles wide and requires high magnification and good seeing.
OF ADDITIONAL INTEREST IN SPACE
Quadrantid meteor shower is on Thursday.
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It is highly recommended that you get a copy of Sky and Telescope’s Field Map of the Moon, the very finest Moon map available for use at the telescope. It is available for $10.95 at www.skyandtelescope.com and on Amazon. All features mentioned in this blog will be keyed to the grid on the Field Map and will look like this: Plato: [NW/D9]
Credits:
Courtesy of Gray Photography of Corpus Christi, Texas
Lunar photos: NASA / USGS / BMDO / LROC / ASU / DLR / LOLA / Moon Globe. Used by permission
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