File:The First Quarter Moon.png

English: The Moon, a souvenir left from the impact of Theia, a Mars-sized body, with our planet during the early formation of our Solar System, is located approximately 384,400 km away from us. The " first quarter " which is the phrase used to describe this phase of the Moon here arises from the fact that in this picture, the Moon has covered one-forth the circumference of its orbit around the Earth. This phase of the Moon is great for observing the fine surface details such as the Lunar maria and craters which are normally too bright to be seen during a Full Moon. Maria is the Latin word for "seas". These so called "seas" exist due to the collision of space rocks ( eg. asteroids, meteoroids ) with the Moon. Because of the high iron content of the basalt in the rock, the maria reflect less light and hence appear darker than the surrounding features.The main maria that can be seen in this picture are the Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Fecunditatis which are the 3 dark spots spanning from the 'dark' side to the 'bright' side just above the equator of the Moon and Mare Crisium which is just above the three maria mentioned above. Equipments used here are the ZWO ASI120MC-S, Celestron Travelscope 70 and the LCM Computerized Mount. Image analysing was done in Planetary Imaging Pre-Processor. Stacking was done in Auto Stakkert. Post processing was done in RegiStax 6.