Plato Craterlet Resolution Examples
Examples... Crater Resolution...
The craterlets on the floor of Plato (Rükl: 3) are favorite targets for testing the resolution limit of Earth-based telescopes. The-Moon Wiki's Plato craterlets page provides an LTVT-displayable dot file listing the craterlet diameters (measured on Lunar Orbiter photography) down to about 0.7 km. The present page provides a side-by-side comparison of some of the best results obtained imaging these objects with Earth-based telescopes of various apertures. Most of these are near the present lower limit of the chart shown on the present site's crater resolution page.
The following views have all been corrected to zero libration and are shown at a uniform LTVT Zoom of 35. The numbers indicate the Aperture of the telescope (in millimeters) and the estimated crater detection threshold (in kilometers). The threshold is the true rim-diameter of craters that have a reasonable chance of being seen, not seen or misidentified as hills on the given photo. The true diameter was determined by using LTVT to measure the size of the corresponding object on the Lunar Orbiter IV photo (blown up to a much larger size), and has been very slightly corrected to compensate for the Moon's changing distance from Earth.
To blink between the full-sized screen shots, right-click on the thumbnails and ask to open them in different windows or browser tabs.
| Aperture/ Detection Threshold | Corrected Photograph | Aperture/ Detection Threshold | Corrected Photograph | Aperture/ Detection Threshold | Corrected Photograph | Aperture/ Detection Threshold | Corrected Photograph |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53 mm / 2.9 km: |  |
104 mm / 1.6 km: |  |
150 mm / 1.5 km: |  |
200 mm / 1.1 km: |  |
| 200 mm / 1.0 km: |  |
235 mm / 1.2 km: |  |
235 mm / 1.0 km: |  |
254 mm / 0.83 km: |  |
| 315 mm / 0.76 km: |  |
356 mm / 0.66 km: |  |
400 mm / 0.88 km: |  |
400 mm / 0.74 km: |  |
| 457 mm / 0.70 km: |  |
457 mm / 0.67 km: |  |
600 mm / 0.57 km: |  |
LO Reference.: |  |
Each of these fine Earth-based photos is responsible for one of the dots near the lower bound of the threshold-versus-aperture chart on the crater resolution page. The skilled imagers who produced them can be identified by correlating the aperture, threshold, and image name given at the bottom of the full-sized LTVT screenshot with the data listed in the spreadsheet accompanying the chart.
- For close-ups of the central craterlets as imaged with various apertures, see the July 28, 2008 LPOD.
This page has been edited 12 times. The last modification was made by - 
JimMosher on Apr 17, 2009 4:54 pm