The Sinus Iridium, or Bay of Rainbows, is a pretty feature that I found by checking it out in the finder.

I had fun trying to ID all the lunar features that I’d shot sort of at random. I found all but one.

Plato is another favorite crater. It’s such a contrast to the surrounding area, and very round and flat.

Apparently, being able to pick up multiple craterlets inside Plato is a test of planetary optics. I don’t think this was the correct lunar phase to really shoot for this; I count 3. I was having a lot of fun picking up photos of stuff on the moon at a scale I’d never really shot before.

After shooting the few large craters that I can identify, I started looking for other interesting craters, assuming I could look them up and ID them online.

This is Grimaldi, which was right on the lunar terminator tonight. It would have fit better with a 90deg rotation of the camera, but I wanted to maintain my orientation so that I didn’t get confused during processing.

North is more or less down in all these photos. shrug

(added 5/26/2011 — I checked the size of those small lumpy features seen on the floor of the crater, and I roughly estimate the largest one to be about 4 miles across, based on the resolution of the image and Grimaldi’s diameter)

Copernicus and Kepler are my two favorite craters on the moon. They actually work a little better when you can see some context, but there you go. Here is Copernicus, a very obvious crater that is visible to the naked eye.

I tried out some high-resolution lunar photography. With the C9.25 and the NexImage (including the ever-present 2x Barlow), I have a FOV of about 2′, so it’s strictly for “craters”, rather than “full disc shots”.

This is a view of the moon that I don’t often get. It was fun to find old favorite craters and see them close up.

This is Aristarchus, the “bright white” crater near Copernicus and Kepler.