Plato Craterlets

Plato Craterlets: Certainly Plato, the legendary "Black Lake," is interesting in its own right. That said, the holy grail for imagers and observers used to be a clear view of the notorious craterlets scattered across the lava floor of Plato. These little dots, the four largest of which (visible here) range from about 2-miles to 1.3-miles in size, are difficult for visual observers (though they are easy to detect as bright spots when the Sun is high), and darned near impossible for film photographers. Webcams and Registax changed all that, of course, as this early webcam image of mine shows.

Image Details:  Celestron C8, SAC 7B webcam. Camera control with  K3CCD Tools, and processing with Registax 2 and Photoshop.

Click Mr. Possum to Return to Rod's Planets!