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03/10/2014 – Ephemeris – Observing the Moon tonight and the crater Copernicus
Ephemeris for Monday, March 10th. The sun will rise at 8:03. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 7:42. The moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 5:04 tomorrow morning.
The moon has certainly changed appearance since I last talked about it last Thursday. It’s gone from a fat crescent to its gibbous phase. Gibbous by the way means hump-backed. Near the sunrise terminator can be seen the great crater Copernicus on the left side of the moon. This crater is 56 miles in diameter and the crater floor is two miles below the top of the crater rim. It has a three central peaks and the interior of the crater walls have slumped causing terracing. All these are easily seen with a small telescope. The crater has been dated to less than a billion years old, and it has a spray of ejecta around it that is roughly circular and can best be seen at full moon when the crater is washed out due to lack of shadows.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The Moon at 10 p.m. on March 10,2014 pointing out the crater Copernicus. Created using Virtual Moon Atlas.
Copernicus from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
08/09/11 – Ephemeris – The moon tonight – musings
Tuesday, August 9th. The sun rises at 6:37. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 19 minutes, setting at 8:57. The moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 3:19 tomorrow morning.
The moon tonight is in its gibbous phase, as it has been since first quarter last weekend. This Saturday it will be full. So now most of the moon’s face is in sunlight. Besides the dark, lava filled dry seas of the moon, which give us the dark spots that some of us imagine as the face of the man in the moon, we can spot many craters and other formations in a telescope. Even as the moon has been accumulating spacecraft, rocket parts, rovers and Hasselblad cameras for the last 50 years none can be seen from the earth. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking photographs of the moon in unprecedented detail. They’ve already located the Apollo landing sites, and discovered a lost Soviet lunar rover. Who knows what else they’ll find.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 