Sunday, March 16, 2008

Rupes Recta, The Straight Wall


9-day-old moon. Ran off 2500 frames with the DMK21AF04/green filter in the 10" LX200 @ f/10 in lousy 2/5 seeing. Used 15 alignment points in Registax. NO WAVELETS. Brought the stacked image over to Lynkeos 2 on the Mac and ran 40 iterations of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, and then a mild unsharp mask. Levels adjusted in Photoshop.

First time I've tried RL deconvolution--I like it. Very smooth.

Info from Wikipedia:
Rupes Recta is a linear fault on the Moon, in the southeastern part of the Mare Nubium at 22.1° S 7.8° W. The name is latin for "Straight Fault", although it is more commonly called the Straight Wall. This is the most well-known escarpment feature on the Moon, and is a popular target for amateur astronomers.
When the sun illuminates the feature at an oblique angle at about day 8 of the lunar orbit, the Rupes Recta casts a wide shadow that gives it the appearance of a steep cliff. The fault has a length of 110 km, a typical width of 2-3 km, and a height of 240-300 m. Thus although it appears to be a vertical cliff in the lunar surface, in actuality the grade of the slope is relatively shallow.
To the west of this escarpment is the Birt crater, which is about 10.5 miles in diameter. Also to the west is the Rima Birt rille. At the southern end is a group of hills often called the "Stag's-Horn Mountains", although this name is not officially recognized by the IAU.

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