I looked for Rupes Recta

I came across THIS site and instantly reawakened my interest in astronomical observations.

Er . . . I don’t mean making my tremendously insightful, wise, and deep commentaries on the nature of the Universe and Humans  in particular.

No, I mean looking at objects inhabiting our Universe, specifically those observable after the sun sets and with clear skies. You know; Moon, stars, UFOs.

I know, I know, I don’t need yet another hobby intruding and diluting my efforts in all my other hobbies. But, that’s the difference between obsession and hobby; the time, the effort, and depth one devotes to the hobby in question. But, I digress.

Lok at this (unprocessed photo) taken on January 14, 2019, while on my Panama cruise. For them interested, Latitude: 9:58:13.7, Longitude: 84:49:50.06. My altitude? It’s listed as 28.2 and I think it’s meters because I was on the balcony of our cabin on the Coral Princess and 28.2 feet is too low. I could be wrong, and it could be some other unit of measure.

For them interested in the exact location . . .

Anyway, why am I mentioning all this and what the heck is Rupes Recta?

Fundamentalist Christians are likely revolted at the thought of something to do with one’s posterior. I mean, yes, to the uneducated it can definitively sound “dirty.” But, no.

You can read about it on THIS post from the blog I linked above. Or, THIS NASA article. Or THIS Astrobin entry. Or THIS LROC entry. Better yet, read them all.

As most people won’t read any of it, it’s a fault line in a crater of the moon that appears as a straight line. Few straight lines on the moon, I tell you. Oh, yeah . . . the name means “Straight Wall.”

Anyway, the post at Cosmic Focus had me wonder if I could see it in any of my many Moon photos. The feature is best seen when the terminator is nearby. No, not the T-800 from the movie; I mean the separation between light and shadow (daytime and nighttime) on the moon.

That’s because the fault line, like most features on the moon, are more easily observed when the light source (the Sun) is low in the horizon and thus protrusions cast shadows.

I stated with my January 2019 photos and searched forward to find the above photo. I rotated the photo 90º to put the moon in an attitude more familiar and consistent with photos presented later in this post. I then played with contrast, brightness, texture, sharpening, and structure to see if the above photo showed Rupes Recta.

I should mention . . . it’s usually only visible at about the 8th day of the lunar cycle and, despite the many moon photos I take, none were taken with an awareness of this feature and hence few were taken at a time to even have a chance of showing this feature.

These are the best processed versions of the above photo that hint at the feature’s presence.

The large box is a 4x enlargement of the smaller box with the arrows showing where Rupes Recta should be.

Given the original photo, these are highly processed but they hint at something being there.

But, yes . . . crappy evidence for me being able to capture the feature with my Nikon P900.

Still, I searched on through the remaining 2019 photos and on April 12th of this year . . .

Rather than two photos, I put both highly processed version on the same photo.

One can see more than a hint of a feature that results in a straight shadow . . . but I was just a tad early. I mean, perhaps a straight shadow shows a straight feature, but it’s subjective.

Note, also, how the smaller craters form a face of sorts. I call it . . . the Rupes Recta Face.

Still, though, not very good. I then started with my February 2017 archives (when I purchased the P900) and looked at all the (many) moon photos I had to see if I had fortuitously captured a photo at the right time.

Dejected, I was, not one of the multiple hundreds of 2017 Moon photos were at the right time for the feature to show. Dang! . . . on to 2018 . . . and October 17, 2018, taken from Kailua Kona, Hawaiʻi . . .

Let me crop that photo and change it to B&W.

Do you see it? Let me help you . . .

It really is a cute face.

Also, still impressed with the camera. I’ll now have to hunt for other features. Maybe I’ll see the Apollo 11 Lander that some people insist sits in an undisclosed Hollywood Studio.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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Note: if you are not reading this blog post at DisperserTracks.com, know that it has been copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intention, like attracting you to a malware-infested website.  Could be they also torture small mammals.

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