Schiller-Zucchius Basin

Session name: 20081010.1900
Equipment: Teleport 10" Reflector
Location: Top of the Lawn
Conditions: Clear night and calm air, mild temperature in the 60s but okay for t-shirt.
Traffic flow: ---
Objects observed: Moon, Jupiter, Callisto transit, Neptune, Albireo, Double Cluster, M31/32, M51.

Photo Caption: Mark up of LO4-154H3; a filtered image sourced from Charles Byrne [1]
Here or photo for larger version of mark up or larger clean, unmarked image.
The original LO4-154H3

The intent of this session was to continue to watch the lunation unfold towards Full Moon from previous sessions over past few days. The waxing gibbous Moon was ~11 days 15 hours with favorable libration for the southern polar region. Mare Australe was apparent on the SE limb and Newton was entirely visible inside the horn of the terminator's crescent.

Three conspicuous craters of apparent equal size sit within the terminator in the south southwest: Zucchius, Bettinus, and Kircher. A fourth one, Segner, abuts Zucchius to the north but appears more shallow and slightly more elongated. I've seen these craters many times before but never noticed the arcuate ridges that stretch between Schiller and Segner.

Two scarps are apparent, not as strongly as those of Mare Nectaris, but nonetheless obvious once they are detected. The outer ring wall arcs from Schiller past the intersection of craters Rost and Rost A, past crater Weigel up to Zucchius-Segner meet point. The inner ring can be seen as an arc from Schiller inside of Weigel and stopped by Segner.

[1] Byrne, Charles J. Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon. Springer-Verlag. 2005.