Art Nouveau Ho

1. TSIOLKOVSKY A beautiful crater on the Far Side. Pick it out by its distinctive black floor and white central peak. It’s black because at impact, the crater flooded with basaltic lava like the dark maria (“seas”) visible on the near side.

(The far side of the Moon has no seas.)

2. TYCHO
A classic. Huge bright rayed crater; what’s not to like? Contains approximately 50% of all drama on the Moon.

3. ARISTARCHUS
Brightest point on the lunar nearside, a tiny shred of brightness in the vast Ocean of Storms.

4. COPERNICUS
Another classic crater. Nothing particularly remarkable about it. It’s just always reliably there, west of centre, providing a steady mark to steer by.

5. SOUTH POLE- AITKEN BASIN
Imagine the Moon is a slightly rotten orange. Aitken Basin is where the heel of a giant hand gripped it and left a bruise. It’s one of the largest impact craters in the Solar System, about 2500 km across and 13 deep.

Since it’s so huge, it contains many smaller impact craters, some of which are so deep that sunlight never reaches the bottom. Lowest depth is about -6000m.

We can’t see the basin since it’s on the far side, but we can see the mountains surrounding it— the Moon’s highest, about the height of Everest (8000m). They are the furthest southern feature visible from Earth.

In conclusion, the Moon is extremely cool.

(Posted to Facebook 17 May 2018)

A new comet, discovered at the end of last year, may become visible to the naked eye in late June and early July.

The point at which any orbiting body is furthest from the Sun is its aphelion. Comets, with their hugely eccentric orbits, may pass far beyond the outer planets to spend their aphelion in the vast interstellar darkness beyond the Kuiper Belt. During this time they travel slowly; when they pass near planets, the gravitational pull will affect their speed; when they approach the Sun, they positively slingshot around it, tails streaming in the solar wind, picking up momentum for their long journey back into the outer dark.

(Earth itself will reach aphelion this year on 6 July. It seems strange that we'll be furthest from the Sun in the middle of summer, but that's where axial tilt will get you.)

If I haven't seen you in a while, blame celestial mechanics. It's very restful out here in the Oort Cloud.

I finished the bias binding on my current corset! Whew. Eyelets tomorrow. ( planets today )