[Swordmaker]

Strange that they would have made such an error. One of the canceled Apollo missions (18) was targeted for Copernicus. We should have gone there and checked it out.

My bad was was that beyond noticing the circle, I also did not really look at the photo that posted. I assumed it was correct and wound up making an ass out of me and although the thrust of the post is really not affected the accuracy is. I don't know where that blog post found THEIR photo, but a concatenation of errors does not excuse my not looking and seeing. I know the difference from studying the Moon many moons ago when i was in my early teens. It was an unconscious error on my part because I was mostly concentrating on the striations of the surroundings, rather than the exact location of the crater. I should have noticed it was not a double crater and the obvious location error. Sheesh!

There would have been a lot to lean from a jaunt to Copernicus, but I think even more could have been learned from going to Aristarchus, which may be one of the newest craters on the Moon. However, there could have been line of sight communication problems, being more on the limb of the Moon than at Copernicus' more central location.

[chimera]

Copernicus is one of my favorite lunar features. I had a 3" refractor with a clock drive and I would spend many hours just looking at it in different lighting and various magnifications. Then some asswipe stole my 'scope in a burglary.

The one reprocessed lunar orbiter view of Copernicus is still pretty awesome: