Review: Photographic Moon Book

Moon

While surfing the web, I came across a great resource for lunar observers and anyone else interested in our Moon. The book is “Photographic Moon Book” and was written and illustrated by Alan Chu. The book is a 225 page 100 megabyte PDF. Most amazing about this high quality reference book is that it is free. This particular edition of the book was just released this month so my coming across it just now was a happy coincidence.

The book is divided into several sections. About This Book provides the reader with a brief introduction to the book itself.

An Overview provides a general introduction to the Moon and to observing the Moon.

The Lunar Features & Events section consists of 33 MAP subsections that in addition to abundant observation details also contains selenographic information. Following the maps are four EVENT subsections that each discuss in detail libration, the lunar terminator, the crescent Moon, and eclipses and occultation.

The book then jumps to the Farside of the Moon making use of Apollo images, then pausing to cover lunar features named after Chinese persons.

Lunar Spacecraft provides a very brief overview of the unmanned and manned missions to the Moon. A map of the location of lander missions to the Moon, both manned and unmanned, is also provided.

The Methods of Imaging section is an introduction to photographing the Moon.The author provides information on a couple different techniques as well as camera related settings.

The book's appendices consist of the following sections:

  • Data of Lunar Images provides photographic and observational information about the author's lunar photos used in the book,
  • Data of the Moon provides a numerical summary of the Moon's characteristics,
  • Glossary contains a number of useful definitions,
  • References provides a list of books and web sites for more information,
  • Crater List provides the name, longitude, latitude, and diameter for named craters,
  • Index that looks to be quite thorough.

Coming across this excellent lunar reference was really a treat and I give it two thumbs up. Thank you Alan Chu for creating this excellent reference guide to the Moon and making it available to the public for free.

Download Site for Photographic Moon Book

Ad Astra, Jim

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Astronomy.