by Jeff Medkeff
Being a lunar buff, and a rather outspoken one at that, I get asked from time to time about which books lunar observers should read. Here's a generic exposition on the titles that I recommend, and some that I don't:
Atlases & Maps
First, an observer needs an atlas. Currently, the most readily available atlas is Antonin Rukl's Atlas of the Moon, published until recently by Astronomy magazine. Sky Publishing has taken it over but, at the time of this writing, their edition has not yet appeared in their catalog. The atlas is serviceable. There are unfortunately relatively frequent but small errors in the depiction of fine topography on the map, and some variation in map resolution from place to place. There are a few, but not many, nomenclature errors, at least in some printings, probably the fault of the printer or overlay productionist. The worst attribute of the map is that it is printed as small sections of the surface, with no overlap from section to section - which makes getting one's bearings near the margins of each chart quite difficult. On the other hand, Rukl has kept lunar cartography alive through a period when everyone else seemed to give up, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a competing atlas today - there simply aren't any other credible choices in the book-sized atlas category. On the whole, I have some reservations about this atlas, mostly because of the way it is published, but at the moment, it is the only book sized map suitable for observers which is reasonably easily available, and just about everyone has a copy - so, if you don't have it, you should probably start here.
A really dedicated observer of the moon might want to get a few other atlases. The Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon, or LOPAM for short, by Bowker & Hughes, can be a good addition to a lunar observer's library, assuming the expense is not off-putting. A working copy in reasonable condition should go for about $300 at the time of this writing; if you find it for half that or less, snatch it up (if you don't want it, sell it to me, and I'll pass it along to a deserving observer). Those that don't want to spend the money for a print copy should note that there is an online version available - it should be adequate for most purposes, but be advised that a good deal of resolution is lost in this digitized version. You can also pick up some real gems from the USGS project to digitize and destripe Lunar Orbiter imagery - check it out.
Note that there is another book, called The Moon as Viewed by Lunar Orbiter (by Kosofsky& El Baz), which is not suitable for use as an atlas - it is a presentation book providing overviews of lunar orbiter imagery, but not providing global coverage and not always providing high resolution. Be cautious about spending too much for this book - a few gouging book dealers will list it quite expensively, as though it were rare or unusual or something, but it should be available for $40 or less.
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LOPAM is great for high-resolution imagery, but it really falls down on the low-relief stuff. Most of the Lunar Orbiter images were made at sun angles around 20° or so. This means that low relief features simply can't be seen in most Lunar Orbiter images. This is where the rare and ultra-expensive Consolidated Lunar Atlas comes in. This is a heavy blue box full of photographic prints and a booklet guide to the atlas - the booklet includes cross-references to Lunar Orbiter images. The atlas was designed to capture each feature on the moon at several different illuminations, with a strong concentration on the terminator. The imagery is the best ground-based whole-moon collection ever assembled and allows the discernment of relief features only a meter high at the terminator. This is great for checking observations or getting oriented in low-light situations. (Consolidated also includes full-moon images for albedo studies, which are handy when observing the full moon; this is part 2 of the Consolidated atlas.) Unfortunately, only 250 copies of Consolidated were produced, and finding one for sale is nearly impossible. When you do find one for sale, it will probably be too expensive! The good news is there is an online version - the bad news is that this is much lower resolution than the original.
Somewhat more available is the Photographic Atlas of the Moon, by Kuiper et al (also known as the USAF Photographic Lunar Atlas and as the Chicago Atlas). This was a collection of then-best ground-based lunar photography taken at several observatories, and combined into an atlas at a constant scale in 1960. Like Consolidated, it shows all features at a variety of illuminations. It is reproduced lithographically, on large sheets. The scale is a bit over-generous, and the resolution, while high for ground-based photographic methods, is not up to the standards of Consolidated. The atlas went through a couple printings, and one of the printings apparently is better-done than the other. Should be available for less than $1000. A press-overrun edition (no fancy box) from time to time pops up for under $500. My copy is signed by Whitaker, one of the co-authors.
The Times Atlas (above) and the Lunar Aeronautical Chart near Plato. |
In addition to LOPAM, dedicated observers might want to pick up a copy of The Times Atlas of the Moon. Other than the first several pages of fluff for the layperson, this once-popular coffee-table book is in fact a reduced-scale and bound reprint of the legendary Lunar Aeronautical Charts produced by the UCAC in the 1960's. These charts were made for astronaut navigation in lunar orbit and landing approach, mission planning, and so forth, and were made by combining photographic data with visual observations made at Lowell Observatory. The perspective is therefore not earth-based (ditto LOPAM, of course), but from a point above the middle of the chart, using different projections for different lunar latitudes. The original LAC charts are extremely rare, tremendously hard to find, and sell for outrageous prices when they are, from time to time, available. But the Times Atlas is a somewhat reduced size version of the entire LAC series, which includes contour information on many charts. People apparently haven't entirely caught on to this yet, and the Times Atlas typically runs less than $40 per copy. To see what the LAC charts/Times Atlas covers, see the Coverage Chart on this site.
For observers who have an observatory, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you get a simple poster chart of the moon and hang it on the observatory wall. This is a very handy quick-reference for lunar navigation and will save a lot of page-flipping in a book atlas when going from place to place. The Sky Publishing online store has several for sale.
Another neat trick for finding your way around the limb regions is to get a lunar globe, which will allow you to tip-tilt and otherwise orient things to match the current libration. Akkana Peck, the lunar observing guru on Shallow-Sky, recommends getting a Repogle toy lunar globe at Toys-R-Us, but after more than a year of searching I've never found one. The full-up Repogle globe seems to be the only thing going right now, but it is unfortunately of rather low contrast, making it a bit hard to use.
The University of Arizona Lunar Quadrant Maps were at one time an up-to-date guide to IAU nomenclature, but since their release, I think there have been some additions and changes. Many observers find these outline maps quite easy to use for navigation (but others hate them). They're cheap, so you can try them out and see with relatively little risk. At a visit to Tom Dobbins' house I noticed he has a set framed up together in quad configuration, so that the whole moon is represented inside a single picture frame - a configuration worth emulating.
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Another atlas, which should probably be mentioned in the section below as well, is the Geologic Atlas of the Moon, published by the US Geological Survey. This is a set of atlas sheets arranged in quadrangles that correspond to the UCAC Lunar Aeronautical Charts mentioned above (see the Coverage Chart), and use the LAC charts as the geological map base. In addition to the quadrangles, there are additional special maps in the Atlas for selected areas, such as locations of Ranger impact, selected Lunar Orbiter sites (generally Apollo landing site candidates), and Apollo landing sites. These are the most colorful maps of the moon in existence and, like geological maps of the earth, they depict geology rather than topography. They are not homogenous - the quads are by different investigators and were prepared and published at different times, so there are many implicit and a few explicit contradictions between different quads. Users of these maps will find Thomas Mutch's book, Geology of the Moon: A Stratigraphic View (see below) helpful in working out the differences between these maps; indeed that book is an essential companion to the Atlas. The Geologic Atlas is still in print and can be ordered from the USGS by calling their 888 number and ordering each map individually. The total cost for the set will run somewhere around $450. Here is how to order them. Obviously, do not buy these maps at more than $7 per sheet from a book dealer - if you do, you are being ripped off. Unfortunately, I do see gouging dealers list individual charts at $30 or more from time to time.
For the Sake of Geology
I personally get a great deal of enjoyment out of understanding what I see on the moon. There is a tremendous amount of telescopically observable geology, if only there were a guide to it. I have high hopes for Charles Wood's upcoming book. In the meantime, I think there are four titles which will give you a summary of lunar geology, if you are willing to wade through (or skip) some irrelevant material, and some material that is only of interest to the researcher. These titles are:
Wilhelms, Don Edward, The Geologic History of the Moon (U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1348) USGS/U.S. Gov't Printing Office 1987
Mutch, Thomas A., Geology of the Moon: A Stratigraphic View, Princeton University Press, 1970
Melosh, H. J.; Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process (Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics; no. 11), Oxford University Press 1989
Heiken, French, Schmidt, et al; Lunar Sourcebook: A User's Guide to the Moon, Cambridge University Press 1991
The Geologic History of the Moon provides (in my opinion) an essential summary of lunar geological history and stratigraphy. (Genuine lunar experts like Charles Wood say that it is a book that will be read far into the next century, so it is obviously a seminal work.) It is by far the most fascinating of the four books to a telescopic observer - or at least it was for me. It absolutely changed the way I see the moon, and I can't look at the moon now without seeing its stratigraphy. It is for this reason that I have become a junkie addicted to lunar geological maps, but perhaps you won't suffer this sickness when you've completed this book.
Geology of the Moon: A Stratigraphic View is somewhat dated, but the global stratigraphy of the moon was founded upon earth-based observation and was a fairly mature discipline in 1970. Ranger and Lunar Orbiter provided a good deal of confirmatory evidence, and allowed the refinement of lunar stratigraphy, and by the time of Apollo all that could be provided were improvements in detail. There have not been too many advances since, and most of those have not significantly affected the interpretation of what can be discerned telescopically, so this book provides a good foundation on which to build.
Melosh is the reference for impact cratering; it covers all solar system bodies including the moon. If you haven't read this, you probably don't understand how so many different looking craters could have been formed on the moon.
Lunar Sourcebook carries more of a survey flavor to it and a good deal of it won't be understood without some background first, so it should probably be tackled last, and even so some observers may not find it to be terribly useful and may prefer to skip it (especially as it is a somewhat expensive book). But it does offer more up to date refinements of stratigraphy than are presented in the other works, as well as additional information on cratering, mare composition, and other topics. It would be a hard thing to use it as a sole-source, though, since it presumes you already know many of the things laid out in the other books. This is by far the most dry reading of any of these books, but it will appeal to engineer sensibilities.
Both of the latter two books contain fairly biggish sections which will not be of intrinsic interest to telescopic observers, but also fairly biggish sections which will. All four of these works use technical language and I suggest getting a decent dictionary (even a geological dictionary may not be excessive) to those who don't have a background in geology.
Armed with these four reference works, you should then add ADS to the arsenal of weapons used to get information on lunar geology:
http://adswww.harvard.edu/index.html
Doing an ADS journal search on a lunar feature name will generally bring back a few papers on anything you care to look at - and many, many papers on famous or significant features. If you want to know something about Copernicus you will have to sift through a couple hundred returns; less famous landforms like Rima Cauchy will return fewer hits. The ADS is a somewhat clunky website compared to slick commerce and search sites, but for up to date information in undiluted scientific form, it is an amazing resource.
In addition to these four books and one website, you might well consider adding a few other items to your library, if you are really into the subject matter. Lunar Science: A Post-Apollo View is a survey, and touches on just about any scientific issue except orbital dynamics. Peter Schultz' Moon Morphology is a large collection of Lunar Orbiter photographs selected to illustrate the end results of geological processes. Both books are good supplements to the core library above.
The Geology of the Terrestrial Planets is another book worth having. This book, published by NASA in 1984, includes fairly detailed syntheses and summaries of terrestrial-planet geology, including of course the moon. The treatment of the moon is substantially up to date, with certain caveats. Clementine and Lunar Prospector have refined our understanding of the geological details, and of course this book doesn't present that information. On the other hand, when it comes to geology which is telescopically observable, the book is fairly current - there have been no substantial, far-reaching changes to our understanding of lunar stratigraphy since the book was published, and it remains a useful guide. As a bonus it includes geological information on the other terrestrial planets as well. It presupposes some knowledge of geology, and of lunar geology, on the part of the reader, and for that reason I don't really recommend it as a first introduction to the subject, but rather as a useful reference for someone who has gone through some of the other titles mentioned above. This book should be readily available - don't pay more than $45 for a copy.
Books to Avoid
There is one book which earns the booby prize, and which should be avoided at all costs: Fred Price's The Moon Observer's Handbook, published by an exceptionally stupid editor at Cambridge University Press in 1988. This book considers that lunar craters were formed volcanically, and gives explanations of other landforms that are equally scatterbrained. On balance, if this book makes a claim, you can probably count on it being wrong, and probably the opposite is true. Charles Wood has this to say about the book at his excellent website:
A throwback to the amateur books of the first part of the century; oblivious to what we learned of the Moon from Apollo and since; earnestly discusses volcanic origin of craters and other long solved problems. I can't understand why such an out of date and misleading book was published in the 1980s.
You may also add to the list of books to avoid for geological information Patrick Moore's New Guide to the Moon which also should have known better.
Also among the books worth avoiding is Atlas of the Lunar Terminator by John E. Westfall, published in 2000 by Cambridge. The book consists substantially of 316 images of the lunar terminator taken by Westfall with a CCD camera and a small telescope. The telescope was fitted with what Westfall believes is an "apodizing screen" but which apparently was simply a knocked-together diffraction screen. Accompanying the images is superficial descriptive text. As part of the image processing routine, Westfall has removed almost all grayscale information from the images, making both albedo and texture invisible over large areas in his images. This may have been necessary to remove the diffraction artifacts caused by his "apodizing screen." Although Cambridge hypes the images as "high resolution," they rarely show details smaller than three or four kilometers in size and are therefore quite coarse even by the standards of binocular observers. Many areas in the images are pure saturated white, while many other areas show obvious pixelization - both in lieu of depicting the actual lunar surface. In addition to the images is found crowded, cluttered, poorly laid-out text, sprinkled with errors concerning geological or morphological matters. Basically, the book is useless. Buy it used for two dollars, otherwise you are being ripped off. If you want an atlas of the terminator, a really crappy digitization of the Consolidated Lunar Atlas will do the job - fortunately, one has been made, and you can get it for free.
While Atlas of the Lunar Terminator is awful, the Hatfield Photographic Lunar Atlas is merely bad. The photographs are low resolution, and reproduced with a somewhat faulty grayscale contrast. One reviewer described the photos as "unattractive and somewhat amateurish," which about sums it up. The detail is sufficient for a user of a 40mm telescope. The text is mundane and unremarkable.
Other Books
There are many other books which are well worth referencing, and people will probably admonish me for not including them on my essential list. But I put the following on my "good to have, but not necessary" list: (This is going to grow as I wade through my notes and my rather startlingly large lunar library and figure out what should go here.)
Paul Spudis, The Once and Future Moon (a popular scientific overview of the moon, up-to-date with Clementine and Lunar Prospector.)
Rene Taton & Curtis Wilson (eds.), The General History of Astronomy v. 2: Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton, Cambridge University Press 1989 (a history of planetary astronomy, with substantial sections on the history of lunar observation, and some nice illustrations. As you can see, it covers things up to Newton's time, so it won't even touch on most of the 18th and 19th century developments.)
Ewen Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon (dry reading, but Ewen is by far the world's expert on the topic - there is nobody who knows the subject better, period. Even the nomenclature gurus at the USGS point to him as the reigning lunar nomenclature and mapping history expert.)
Zdenek Kopal, R. W. Carder, Mapping of the Moon, Past and Present, D. Riedel, Dordrecht 1974 (Pretty good discussion of mapping history. Has a nice emphasis on modern mapping methods and an excellent history of USAF moon mapping. Also covers USSR mapping efforts.)
Harold Hill, A Portfolio of Lunar Drawings (a collection of Harold's unique ink-stipple lunar sketches. Not a great observers' reference, but a book I really like to look at and admire.)
H. P. Wilkins, The Moon (a pre-space age description of the telescopic appearance of the lunar surface, by a person we must admit was something of a whacked individual. A bit of a classic, but as expected quite unreliable in places. Adheres to the volcanic theory of the formation of craters, so entirely unreliable as regards lunar science. A later edition, co-authored by Moore, shares the same characteristics. Includes a useless lunar map in enormous detail.)
Walter Goodacre, The Moon (a fairly rare, pre-space age classic, published privately. The usual caution in accepting the scientific theories is advised, but provides a good descriptive text and wonderful illustrations.)
Other Online resources:
PDS Planetary Image Atlas (a product of the USGS to provide on-demand mapping from the Clementine data. The images might be somewhat hard to use....)
Solar System Surface Map Database (this NASA/JPL/Caltech project run by David Seal has a nice texture map of the moon, linked to here, though it is somewhat low resolution. There is, however, a 12 meg jpeg version which I haven't looked at.)
Charles Wood's website contains a small collection of interesting information, much of it not available elsewhere. I wait with high hopes for his forthcoming book, as well.
NSSDC's CD-Rom Catalog is where you go to order your Clementine CD's and other neat goodies.
The RPIF - or, more correctly, the RPIF nearest to my home. The Regional Planetary Image Facilities are places where they have big archives of all sorts of images taken by spacecraft. If you want a particular Lunar Orbiter shot, you order it at one of these. If you want to look at big charts and maps, this is your place. If you want to browse through mission archive CD-Rom's, you should come to one of the RPIFs. There is a link here to the other 17 RPIFs, so you can find one near you.
Transient Lunar Phenomena Catalog - from a NASA publication, hosted by a UFO research group.
part of Jeff Medkeff's Notes on Lunar Features
Jeff Medkeff's home page.
Jeff's astronomy pages.
Copyright © Jeff Medkeff, 2002, All Rights Reserved.
