The Full Moon

moon Well the moon once again as usuall will show its fascinating details on the night of 3rd and 4th September when it will be fully exposed. Looking at it is so interesting because it’s the only object in our solar system on which we can see a well detailed topography without using any telescope nor any binoculars. For amateur astronomers, full moon is a great way to start looking at the night sky either by using a telescope or binoculars. The moon reveals many interesting features for example you can see the mountains on the horizon of the moon which are created by the foreign object impacts such as asteroids and also see the dark area’s so called sea’s on it even though there isn’t a single drop of water there. The lighter areas are mostly cratered highlands, where relatively recent asteroids have crashed into the moon’s surface, exposing bright rock beneath the surface.

On the night of September 3, the full moon will rise slowly in the east as the sun sets in the west. Credit: Starry Night® Software

In the above picture you can see a very large dark area on the left, well it’s an ocean known as the “Oceanus Procellarum” or Ocean of Storms and above it is the “Mare Imbrium” or Sea of Showers. Now on the right side you can see a triangle of three smaller “seas”: the “Mare Serenitatis” (Sea of Serenity), “Mare Tranquillitatis” (Sea of Tranquility) and “Mare Crisium” (Sea of Crises) just opposite to Imbrium. It is the Mare Tranquility where Apollo 11 landed. Then at the bottom you can see lots of craters nearly hundred of them and among them is a white shiny prominent crater known as Tycho. This crater is brilliantly white, and is the source of a huge system of rays: bright linear features which encircle the globe of the moon. The Tycho ray system, along with several smaller ray systems, are best seen when the moon is full.

Skywatchers Moon Map

Article by Assad Ali

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