Copyright GLR GROUP 2004
Our Papers Published in international and national magazine
 

Revised dome list by   Charles Kapral and Robert Garfinkle

Digital Version by Piergiovanni Salimbeni and Fabio Lottero

 
Lunar Domes and Lunar Domes Maps: an Overview By Raffaello Lena and GLR group


The Geological Lunar Research (GLR) group has an ongoing project to discover and study lunar domes. Our activity has shown both the elusive nature of
these lunar structures and the utility of CCD-image analysis in the elucidation of their character.

The original amateur lunar dome catalog was compiled by Harry Jamieson in the 1960s as part of a joint effort between the Association of Lunar and
Planetary Observers (ALPO) and the British Astronomical Association (BAA). In 1992, Harry Jamieson and Jim Phillips (Jamieson & Phillips, 1992)
published a revised lunar dome catalogue in the "Journal of the ALPO". The catalogue contained 713 domes. This work was a result of lunar dome
observations from several ALPO members.

The last published ALPO catalogue (1992) contained errors and has missing or incomplete data. When ALPO and the BAA first began their dome catalogue, the observers were using different maps, which in turn led to some of the domes in the catalogue being multiple observations of the same dome. It is also possible that some coordinates are simply wrong.

The GLR (since 1997) has an active team of observers (from several Countries)  and has studied several lunar domes.
We have added new domes to the existing lists and are continuing to do so, providing geological information, dome measurements and dome classification by slope and height. Dome coordinates have been updated, with consistent measurements.

Several domes, studied by our group, have been included in a revised (unpublished) list by Robert A. Garfinkle, F.R.A.S. He has spend nearly 11 years revising, correcting, editing, and amending the 1992 ALPO catalogue.

Charles Kapral has recently compiled another revised list incorporating all domes listed in previous dome catalogues, other publications and those found by GLR research. Kapral's work also includes charts based on the Lunar Quadrant Maps (LQM) by D. W. G. Arthur and A.P. Agniery, (1964), "Lunar Designations and Positions, Quadrant I, II, III, IV". The LQM use the lunar Xi and Eta coordinates instead of lunar longitude and latitude.

Kapral's maps and catalogue are on the Internet (digital version by Piergiovanni Salimbeni) here.


Our current study of domes has been created facilitated by our own observations and CCD-images. Good quality data is regularly obtained by
several active GLR observers and many works have been written in combined efforts such as: Jim Phillips, KC Pau, Cristian  Fattinnanzi, Rodrigo Viegas, Piergiovanni Salimbeni, Christian Wohler, Maria  Teresa Bregante.

 

Brendan Shaw has plotted the location of many domes on the Lunar Aeronautical Charts (LAC), so that other observers and dome researchers can
easily check to see if a particular dome has been previously reported.

The maps show filled circles at the locations of domes reported in two revised catalogues. Red circles are domes that appear in both the catalogues of Kapral and Garfinkle and whose positions agree within 0.1°. Green domes appear only in Kapral's revised catalogue and blue ones only in Garfinkle's catalogue. The digital version for the web was assured by Piergiovanni Salimbeni and Fabio Lottero.

On a final note I would like to thank all the authors and observers working for GLR - their enthusiasm, work, and results are a vivid indication of what a team of dedicated observers can accomplish.
 




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