Moon craters Faraday Stofler and Maurolycus. Pictures by astronomical telescope.

In these images, the largest craters visible to your attention at first glance, are called Stofler right, and Maurolycus. These should be vice versa, but the image is inverted by the telescope.
Stofler (126 km), is an almost circular crater. Eastern edge is "notched" , and so the floor, as a whole, seem to be like a goose foot. An interesting thing you notice is its flooring where there are several shades. These are limited to three dark spots. Other features, are many very small craters on the floor, which seemed to be riddled by bullets. Another feature of Stofler are satellite craters placed on the edge, such as Stofler K (19 km), on the outer edge to the north-west, and Stofler F (18 km), on the inside of the crater, to the south.

Southeast, stuck to Stofler, is Faraday crater (70 km). It is smaller in size, and also has satellite craters on edge, namely Faraday A (21 km) and C (30 km). The latter has some central peaks inside. Faraday is a circular crater, but distorted by A and C mentioned above.

The second big crater in these pictures, is Maurolycus (114 km), a circular crater which looks messy at first glance, because it has many features. It has smaller subsequent craters but also landforms on the floor.

The interior walls are very wide, especially in the northwest and northeast. On the edges exists craters that occurred after the impact that formed Maurolycus. On the north-west is the crater Maurolycus F (25 km), stuck to Maurolycus B (12 km) and on the south, is Maurolycus A (15 km). On the floor are also craters, on the south-central being Maurolycus J, on West M, on center-east L, and on north N.

The interior walls to V-N-E, are terraced, and are more wide inward to the floor than the south wall. North-west, the wall enters the floor and gives the impression of an extended wall of Maurolycus, right in the center. This higher area than the floor is more affected than the rest of the floor by subsequent impacts. In general, the whole floor is "riddled" with very small craters that are seen only with a powerful telescope and a pure atmosphere.

Please remember about the cardinal points that I wrote in the article, which are correct only if you look at the picture upside down, because the images are inverted as seen through the telescope.

Optical Reflector Telescope Celestron C8-Newtonian inch, 20mm Plössl, 2x Barlow
Mount: CG5 (EQ5)
Camera: Sony HDR CX105 to 8x optical zoom
Total Magnification: 800x
Filter: No
Date: 20/07/2011
Location: Baia Mare, Romania
Processing: Registax

The above image is made ​​in the February 12, 2011.

Posted in: Craters-Stöfler and Maurolycus