The southern lunar highlands expose the ancient anorthositic crust between craters. Centered in this southern highland sketch is the buried pre-Imbrian crater Heraclitus (92 km.) with its unusual central mountain crest. This ridge or crest looks much like the one on the floor of the elongated crater Schiller formed during its shallow angle impact. The ends of Heraclitus are buried under Licetus (77 km.) to the north and Heraclitus D (52 km.) to the south. Its easy to imagine this possible Schiller twin here partly hidden. To the east is crater Cuvier (76 km.) with its smooth floor and western wall pressing in on Heraclitus.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Canson paper 9″x 12″, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and blending stumps. The scanned sketch is unmodified
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 4 mm eyepiece 362x
Date: 09-24-2012, 00:15 – 01:50 UT
Temperature: 10°C (50° F)
clear, calm
Seeing: average Antoniadi III
Colongitude 11.3 °
Lunation 7.9 days
Illumination: 63.5 %
Frank McCabe
