Schematic Chart of the Far Side of the Moon

Abstract

The photographs of the far side of the Moon, obtained on 7 October 1959 by the automatic interplanetary station, were studied at the Pulkovo Observatory independently from other observatories. The purpose of this work was to detect authentic objects on the far side of the Moon, to determine their selenographic coordinates, and to draw—on this basis—a schematic chart with an approximate distribution of the brightness of detected features. In contrast with the work conducted at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute [1], the Pulkovo Observatory did not apply the method consisting of an artificial increase of the contrast of features within a specific range of densities (the so-called method of photometric cross-sections). Therefore, we detected only the topographically most distinctive features, which can be examined directly on photographs and compared with others.