Places on the Moon: Aristoteles and Eudoxus Craters

Narrative

I had some cloudless skies this week in Hawaii and was able to take out my Celestron NexStar Evolution 8 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope and takes some nice pictures of the waxing crescent Moon.  I am very low tech with my astrophotography since I simply hold a point and shoot Canon PowerShot D30 camera on the telescope’s eyepiece.

Amazingly this technique actually works to capture some pretty nice images of the Moon:

The latest terrain feature on the Moon that I have decided to focus on were the twin craters of Aristoteles and Eudoxus:

When looking at the Moon through a telescope these twin craters are very recognizable.  Aristoteles Crater is named after the Greek Philosopher Aristotle and student of Plato by the International Astronomical Union, using the classical form of his name.  Eudoxus likewise is named after a classical Greek, Eudoxus of Cnidus who was an astronomer, mathematician, physician, scholar and who also was a student of Plato.

Fun Facts

Here are some fun facts about these two craters.  They are each a little over 11,000 feet (3,400 meters) in depth.  Standing inside of the craters would feel like you were surrounded on all sides by mountains the size of Mt. Hood in Oregon.  Here are some more interesting measurements.  The Aristoteles crater has a diameter of 54 miles (87 km) and the Eudoxus Crater is 41 miles (67 km) wide.  To put that into perspective the state of Rhode Island is roughly 60 kilometers wide.  This means our smallest US state could be dropped into both craters with room to spare!