Craters Frankin and Cepheus One Night Apart

Craters Cepheus and Franklin
Craters Cepheus and Franklin

With the Moon at waning gibbous phase, it continues to dominate the night sky for a few more days. On Tuesday night I carefully picked a target area for sketching so that I might catch it again the next night to see the change in shadows a day makes. Lucky for me the sky was clear both nights.
Crater Franklin (58 km.) is the larger and older of the pair and Cepheus (41 km.) has a visible impact crater namely, Cepheus A (13 km.) directly on its northeastern rim.

Sketching Information

First Sketch
Franklin and Cepheus craters on ebony black Canson paper using white and black Conte’ pastel pencils
Sketch Date: August 16, 2011, using a 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian telescope riding on an equatorial platform with a 6mm eyepiece for 241x at 05:00-06:10 UT
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Weather: Clear, calm, 59 degrees F (15 degrees C)
Lunation: 16.5 days
Moon 94.3% illuminated
Colongitude: 115.7°

Second Sketch
Same type of paper
Sketch Date: August 17, 2011, using same telescope and same eyepiece at 04:00-05:15 UT
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Weather clear, calm, 64 degrees F (17 degrees C)
Lunation 17.4 days
Moon 89.3% illuminated
Colongitude 127.3°

Frank McCabe

5 thoughts on “Craters Frankin and Cepheus One Night Apart”

  1. These are certainly amazingly detailed sketches! An artwork to say the least.

    I like this way of presenting the same region in two consecutive days!

    Thanks!

    Jean

  2. Frank,

    An excellent comparison between the Franklin/Cepheus region of the Moon under different lighting conditions. Both sketches are very well done.

    Carlos

  3. Very creative way to show this part of the moon.
    Dynamic.

    Presenting two drawings of the same area is much more difficult than a single drawing: I can imagine the possibility that the second drawing is more detailed than the first, which would undermine the desired effect.

    But you have succeeded very well to keep these drawing much alike.

    best regards
    Harro from the Netherlands

Leave a Reply