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ALBATEGNIUS

By Richard Hill  |  15 Aug 2023  |  Sacred Space Astronomy

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This entry is part 82 of 80 in the series Lunarcy

The large flat floored crater just above center is Albategnius (dia. 139km) with the crater Klein (46km) on its west (left) wall. In the upper left of this image is the great walled plain Ptolemaeus (158km) with Alphonsus (121km) below its central peak catching the first rays of the morning sunlight. Below that is Arzachel (100km) with its central peak likewise just seeing sunrise. South of Albategnius is a curious feature that looks like two craters with a north-south trough running through them. Actually, it is the merged alignment of four craters. The largest crater is Vogel (26km) with Vogel B (21km) just above and Vogel A (9km) above that. Below Vogel B is the last member of this alignment, an unnamed and badly eroded crater some 10-12 km in diameter. These separate features can only be seen clearly during higher illuminations.

Note the large scratch marks that run diagonally from upper left to lower right in this image. These are “scratches” carved by city sized ejecta bolders from the Imbrium impact to the north. In the upper right corner you can see a small “x” that marks the Apollo 16 landing site and below it a whitish area that is one of the enigmatic magnetic ‘lunar swirls’ on the north edge of the ruined crater Descartes. Just below the ‘x’ is a tiny white spot. This is “South Ray” a very small bright rayed crater only 0.6km in diameter. The crater is hard to see but you should be able to pick out the bright spot and find the landing site. There are sites on the web that have close up images of all the Apollo landing sites so you can use these images at your telescope to find these features.

Further south is a fair sized flat floored crater Abulfeda (62km) with a long string of craterlets tangent to the south wall. This kind of feature is called a “catena” and this one is Catena Abulfeda that runs over 200km across these lunar highlands.

There is so much more to talk about in just this single image but I’m not writing a book here!

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