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The Moon: Werner X
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PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:15 am    Post subject: The Moon: Werner X Reply with quote
Wikipedia wrote:
This is a famous "optical feature" on the Moon, which appears like the letter "X" when the terminator is at a suitable position. It is a fine example of how the combination of lighting and topography can combine to produce a pattern that repeats on each lunation, but only for a short time. The illusion of the "X" is created by sunlight falling on the rims/ridges between the craters La Caille, Blanchinus, and Purbach.
The "X" is observable for about 4 hours around the lunar First Quarter.


The Werner X or Lunar X forms a challenge to many astronomy enthusiasts to capture and to visually observe. As it may only be visible under good circumstances 2 or 3 times a year. Last 2 oppertunities have been cloudy so I was eager to catch it this time.

I used a telescopic mount to track the moons movement and to keep it steady in the field of view. As 'lens' i've used a refractor ( lenstype ) telescope, A Baader 80/480 was used with a William Optics Minus Violet filter to kill the fringe around bright objects. On the overview photo I just attached the DSLR to the telescope and took 20 photos to stack. On the zoomed/crop of Werner X, I used 2 Teleconvertors to get a decent result. However this shows how hard it is to get a clear picture with all kinds of atmopsheric effects making the image look unclear or wobbly. This also shows why CCD camera's are better at planets and the moon. As they can record an AVI of like 800 frames and there are always a lot of good ones then. With DSLR it's a hit and miss.

Lets see if you can find Werner X around the terminator/shadow on the Moon!





PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Awesome! X marks the spot Laughing
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