Mare Crisium: One Day Past Full Moon

Mare Crisium: One Day Past Full Moon

I made a decision on Saturday evening I was going to try and complete a lunar sketch of Mare Crisium even though the chances of success were poor. I was forced to stop 3 times by dense clouds and a little rain but three and half hours after beginning, something of the view ended up on the paper.
Mare Crisium is that interesting isolated sea on the northeastern side of the visible lunar surface.
The robotic Luna 24 took soil and rock samples from this sea floor and returned them to the U.S.S.R. back in 1976.
The Nectarian Period event that formed this feature occurred more than 3.8 billion years ago as an asteroid –type body slammed into the moon from the west. The mare portion of the basin is about 500 kilometers across and segments of the low ridges of the inner basin ring (375 km.) were visible in the grazing sunlight on the eastern floor. These features are Dorsum Tetyaev and to the south Dorsum Harker just beyond the massifs of Cape Agarum. On the western floor crater Picard (24 km.) and Peirce (19 km.) were also noted.
Beyond the sea to the West crater Proclus (28 km.) with its remarkable bright rays was reflecting much sunlight and large crater Cleomedes (126 km.) to the north was showing off its central peak.
I hope to have another go at this region of the moon in the near future under better conditions.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Canson paper 9″x 12″, white and black Conte’
pastel pencils , and Conte’crayons, a blending stump, plastic eraser. Brightness was decreased -2 and contrast increased +2 using the scanner for this sketch
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian with 6mm (241x) and 8mm (181x ) eyepieces
Date: 10-24-2010 2:05-5:30 UT
Temperature: 16°C (60°F)
Weather: mostly cloudy, some rain, windy
Seeing: Antoniadi IV
Co longitude: 107°
Lunation: 16.4 days
Illumination: 98.7%

Oak Forest, Illinois

Frank McCabe