Deprecation notice: The Dec. 31, 2007 edition will be the last installment of the index to nearside LPODs. Deprecation originally occured with the Sept. 30, 2007 with 3rd Quarter 2007 indice edition. On January 1, 2008, Dr. Wood transfered new entries to the third LPOD site - a wikispace. To provide consistent encapsulation of this indexing with the second LPOD site, this index was extended to the last entry on LPOD 2d ending Dec. 31, 2007. A conversion to the Wikispace dialect of Wikimedia was attempted, but a compatible HTML-Wiki dialect translator could not be located.
This site provides hyperlinked indices to the second site edition of the popular Lunar Photo of the Day (LPOD) website (in Wordpress). The current third site edition of LPOD moved to a wikispace on Jan. 1, 2008. This second LPOD site index covers 2004 to Dec. 31, 2007. This index update adds 170 records to the 9/30/2007 version containing 1,478 lines, for a total of 1,648 entries. Hyperlinks to the LPOD articles are provided in index lists:
The intended use for these lists is an observing aid to astronomy clubs and individual amateur lunar observers who want to improve their public educational star parties or their general enjoyment of the Moon. It is hoped that astronomy club presenters can use these lists to ascertain which LPODs are available within 10-20 degrees of the current colongitude of the lunar terminator. Observing plans and presentations can then be enchanced with Dr. Wood's insights and the numerous photographic contributions of many expert-level amateur astrophotographers including (to name just a few LPOD photo contributors) Paolo Lazzarotti, K.C. Pau, Mike Wirths, Wes Higgins, and Anthony Ayiomamitis.
Not all LPODs are included in the index. Only LPOD entries involving nearside features are indexed. Historical commentary and farside features are excluded from this index. Some full Moon disk phase shots are excluded. Before June 2006, repeated postings of an LPOD are not indexed.
After June 2006, vacation LPODs that repeat earlier entries are included in the index in order to provide a measure of repetition.
Since 2004, Dr. Wood, aided by many amateur astrophotographers, has provided an expert and lively running annotation of lunar features via the LPOD website. The LPODs supplement Dr. Wood's 2003 book, The Modern Moon: A Personal View, and his ongoing monthly article in Sky & Telescope magazine.
The rise of the LPOD website itself is an outgrowth of the widespread distribution of astrophotography web cameras and imaging processing software since 2000. Using 8 inch to 18 inch amateur telescopes, modern web cameras like the popular Toucam Pro imager and image processing software like Berry and Burnell's AIP4WIN, amateur astrophotographs now can produce Earth-based lunar photographs that equal work by professional observatory telescopes during the 1960s and 1970s. This technological change has driven a renewed interest in lunar observing.
This site and author are not affiliated with LPOD. This author is a beginner amateur lunar observer.
The outstanding freeware Virtual Atlas of the Moon (VAM) by Patrick Chevalley and Christian Legrand includes cross-reference indexing to Wood's The Modern Moon: A Personal View, Antonin Rukl's An Atlas of the Moon and John E. Westfall's Atlas of the Lunar Terminator. Using VAM, it is possible to filter for craters and other features currently on or near lunar terminator and then easily look up the book and chart cross-references. As of this writing, VAM does not include cross-referencing to LPOD articles. Another recommended lunar map program is Jim Mosher's Lunar Terminator Visualization Tool (LTVT).
The LPOD 2d site beginning with articles dated January 1, 2006, includes built-in cross-referencing by feature type, but not by lunar latitude and longitude or by feature name.
Use of the latitude and longitude LPOD index requires knowing the current or future position of the lunar terminator. If you are in the field, this is done by comparing the telescopic or binocular view of the Moon with a lunar atlas. Other resources for finding the current or future lunar terminator position include:
Users of Microsoft Excel can import the indices into a spreadsheet by simply copying the list url into Excel's "open file" dialogue. Once imported, the lists can be sorted by descending lunar latitude and descending lunar longitude. In conjunction with Excel's data filter feature, the LPOD articles can be filtered based on a range of lunar longitudes. The resulting articles will be sorted by descending lunar latitude. Hyperlinking to the LPOD articles remains active within Excel.
Using the United States Geologic Services Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature - Moon Nomenclature Tables, a table of approximately 9,000 near-side lunar features was developed that have official International Astronomical Union or USGS sanctioned names. Over 600 LPODS were reviewed at the current and archive LPOD sites. A bibliography of Dr. Wood's monthly Sky & Telescope articles and his public access online articles at the Sky & Telescope website were developed. A subset of articles that involve specific nearside features was prepared. Excluded from the list were LPOD articles that dealt exclusively with historical matters or far-side objects that could not be directly viewed by Earth-based amateur lunar observers.
This process yielded a list of around 400 LPOD and other online articles. Each LPOD and other online article was reviewed to pair, to a reasonable practical extent, to the key near-side feature discussed in the article. That feature was paired with the selenographic coordinates and feature name from the USGS Gazetteer. In some cases, at the author's discretion, articles involving several important features were listed several times - once for each feature name. That decompression of the one-to-many relationship between features and articles was purely subjective. It was felt that the pairing and filtering of a feature lunar longitude with an article was sufficient to direct a reader to between 5 to 10 articles on a specific observing night. Reviewing these short lists of articles would reveal the additional target options.
Where a feature or collection of features discussed in an LPOD article could not be associated with an sanctioned feature name in the USGS Gazetteer, the list field "IAU_NLFName" is set to "False". When a feature or collection of features could not be associated with a specific lunar latitude and longitude but was known to be near a named-feature, the field "Non-IAU_NLF Position Tag" lists the nearby feature that is used as a position tag.
The end result of this list development process was, through June 1, 2006, 446 article-feature entries.
Pursuant to a June 2, 2006 request from Charles Wood, indexing and sorting was expanded to include chart numbers from Rükl's Atlas of the Moon (2ed) and image credits. Often, there is a one-to-many relationship between an LPOD article and the corresponding charts and image providers. In these flat file lists where there is more than one applicable attribute, the primary chart of interest or amateur astrophotographer is listed first. The Rükl chart numbers were associated with each LPOD by the following procedure. First, the LPOD articles were reviewed and pre-existing Rükl chart numbers were copied. Pre-existing Rükl chart numbers were available for about one-half the entries. For the other one-half of the entries, Rükl's Atlas was reviewed for the positional association object assigned to each LPOD. The applicable Rükl chart number was then assigned. Minor adjustments were made to approximately 20 pre-existing LPOD Rükl chart numbers. Some typographical errors in position assignments were also discovered and corrected during this review.
A separate Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is also provided by which any interested party can add future LPOD index entries and maintain the lists.
Persons interested in jointly indexing for future updates should contact me at fisherka@csolutions.net.
This site should be deprecated by a incorporation into Dr. Wood's LPOD site, which is run using WordPress software. Persons with sufficient programming background are invited to contact Dr. Wood or myself regarding the same.
No copyright is asserted to any original content materials developed and included by this author in this website and the same are released to the public domain. No copyright is asserted as to any scientific fact recited herein.
It is the nature of the internet that information contained on it is temporary. This website was developed for the enjoyment of the amateur astronomical community and as an aid for astronomy clubs, amateurs and secondary school educators. I encourage students and other amateurs to freely download, store and/or redistribute this website.
Prepared by: K. Fisher 3/2008 fisherka@csolutions.net Original: 7/17/2006