macpuzlBy Chuck McPartlin
The night of Friday, April 3, was breezy but clear, with a bright gibbous Moon. The large rayed craters Tycho (at bottom right) and Copernicus (left of center) were showing up nicely. To give you some scale, Tycho is about 53 miles in diameter, and 15,750 feet deep. Copernicus is about 58 miles across, and 12,470 feet deep. The Moon is about 2,160 miles in diameter.
At this phase, there are also two reasonably prominent anthropomorphic figures visible on the Moon, if you’re a fan of pareidolia. Since they were almost 225,000 miles away, distant socializing was allowed.
Filling up most of the illuminated surface was the Woman on the Moon, eagerly anticipating the future arrival of NASA’s proposed Artemis mission. And in the upper right portion was the Soccer Player and his soccer ball. Let’s take a closer look at the soccer player, because something interesting happened there back in 1969.
The upper torso of the soccer player is the Sea of Tranquillity. If you look at his lower shoulder area you can see a feature along the sea’s shoreline that looks like a fish with a pac-man mouth jumping up to eat a little white cookie.
That cookie is a crater named Moltke, about 4 miles across and 4,265 feet deep, and Apollo 11 landed just above and to the left of it.
