NASA's Luna Recognisance orbiter (LRO) celebrates five years imaging, and studying the Moon on June 18th. The Moon has always been a splendid sight in the night sky, and when an amateur receives his first telescope and sets it up in the garden, the Moon is often the first object to be viewed through the eyepiece. Therefore, in this month's program, we take a look at how best to observe the Moon, and how to recognise some of the main craters.
There is a very nice FREE computer program that you can use to help recognise all of the Luna features, it is called the 'Virtual Moon Atlas,' and it can be downloaded free using this link : http://ap-i.net/avl/en/download.
