Summer is a great time to enjoy looking at the Moon. For one thing it doesn’t climb very high in the sky, so you don’t have to get a crick in your neck staring up at it. Also, the long, warm nights are perfect for moongazing: just lie back in a sun lounger or deck chair, relax and enjoy the sight of our natural satellite hanging above the trees or your neighbour’s roof.
If you have a pair of binoculars you can see a surprising amount of detail on the Moon. They will show you its largest craters - huge holes blown out of its surface by the impact of asteroids millions or even billions of years ago. They will also show you its highest mountain ranges, some of which rival Earth’s most beautiful. But the most striking sights in binoculars are the Moon’s seas, or ‘mare’, which are not bodies of water but huge, flat plains of ancient lava which flowed out of the lunar surface like the yolk of an egg and spread across its terrain before freezing in the aftermath of enormous asteroid impacts.
One of the largest of these seas is Mare Imbrium, the ‘Sea of Showers’, which forms the bloated right eye of the ‘Man in the Moon’ when the phase is at its fullest. With the unaided eye, the lunar sea can be located at the top and centre of the Moon’s disc but if you up your magnification through binoculars, you will see a small, dark circle or oval at the top of Mare Imbrium. This is a walled plain called ‘Plato’, and it’s arguably one of the most famous features on the Moon.