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The site where all the map pages from Rukl's fine Atlas of the Moon reside has an awful lot of ads popping up, cookies being placed, and some broken code leading to errors loading some pages. This set of web pages were originally from that web site, but the foo has been edited out, and the code has been cleaned up. To make these pages work though, you'll have to do some data gathering and some folder construction on your machine. When you're done, you'll have about 6.8Mb of atlas, linked by several web pages, mostly in their own folder on your hard drive. You'll never have to log onto the net, or see pop-ups to peruse this atlas again.
If the atlas was still available, I'd heartily recommend buying it. As it is, there are rumored to be a few copies still in stores, dotted around the country. A few opportunists have placed their copies for sale on E-bay at horrific prices. These scanned pages are medium quality. There's no index to individual craters (you'd get that if you had the book). Still, it's quite useful as is, and it's grand for those of you who use no more than binoculars.
Here then is how you can go about creating your own version. The original author is Yuri Mackeyev, and you can get to his site here. At his site, you'll find a link to the "Moon Atlas Page" (really a planet page), then a link to the "Moon Atlas" page (same name). That's where we'll start. Two catches - I'm assuming you know how to unzip files (you'll need to do it twice), and move files around on your own drive.
NOTE: If you've already downloaded all of Yuri's pages (per beta-version instructions posted here weeks ago), you can skip directly to step 6.
  1. Create a folder where you're going to save all this stuff.
  2. Open a new window into Yuri's Moon Atlas pages by clicking this link:

    (this page of instructions will remain on-screen for you to follow). Be prepared for pop-up ads. Don't bother to close them- they'll only keep popping up as you continue.
  3. Scroll up and down to make sure that all the tiles are filled in. When they are, it means you have all the index images, and you can save this page.
  4. This page is the index page. Save it: in Internet Explorer, pull down the "File" menu, click on "Save As", and save it with the name "Moon_Idx" to that folder you created in the first step.
  5. You'll have saved an HTML file, and its associated image and script files will go into a sub-folder named same with "_files" added to the name. Whoopee. That's one.
  6. Scroll down a bit, and you'll see that you have a series of images that tile into a view of the North-West Quadrant of the Moon. Click on any of the tiles in that quadrant.
  7. The window changes to a page with a column of images that make up the NW quad. Scroll up and down the page to make sure you have all the images. These are the full-resolution images for that quad.
  8. Save this page using the same procedure as you used to save the index page, but give it a short name that identifies it as being the one of the quads, like "QNW".
  9. Hit your browser's "Back" button (or the keystroke equivalent: Alt-Backspace) to return to the index page.
  10. Repeat the above step for each of the three remaining quads, saving each page into a new file named for the particular quad.
Note: Two of the pages gave me script errors and closed Internet Explorer. After going right back to the page, the error did not repeat, and I was able to save those two pages. You might end up with similar results. Stay alert.
  1. Close out Yuri's pages, and any ad pop-ups that it left on your desktop. You might also clean out your cookies on your next boot.
  2. Explore the folder you've created for saving this stuff.
  3. Delete all the files in the folder, and leave the sub-folders intact.
  4. Rename any one of the quadrant subfolders (not the index folder!) to "Tiles"
  5. Move the files from the three remaining quadrant subfolders (not the index folder!) into the Tiles folder.
If you're copying correctly, you should get warnings about overwriting some files. Go ahead and overwrite. The duplicates really are duplicates, and it doesn't matter. If you're not getting warnings, make sure you're not copying the folders themselves into the Tiles folder. Copy the FILES from each folder into Tiles!
  1. Within the Tiles folder, delete:
  2. Script files (*.js)
  3. Background files (*.gif)
There is probably a total of four files to delete. All you should have left are the "##_large.jpg" files.
  1. Remove the three empty quad folders.
  2. Rename the "Moon_Idx_files" folder to "Moon_Idx" (drop the "_files").
  3. Within the Moon_Idx folder, you should delete all (two, I believe) script files (*.js). There are three others you can opt to nuke (but I like keeping):
  4. The "backgr_1.gif" is the cool greenish background pattern, and you can delete that if you really don't want that pattern, or substitute that file with a backround that you do like (just name it the same).
  5. The "image93.gif" file is the greenish, horizontal bar that separates images and sections.
  6. The "moon_key.jpg" file is the small, greyscale image of the Moon.
  1. That'll leave you with the need for the indexing pages. Those are the pages I've cleaned up or created.
  2. Download the index pages by clicking here,
  3. Click on the option that you want to save this file to disk.
  4. Save it to the folder you created in Step One - the one you just nuked all those HTML pages from in Step Six.
  5. Unzip the files into that same folder.
  6. Move the two .JPG files into the Moon_Idx folder.
  7. spectrum.jpg will form a scrollbar at the bottom of your browser if the window isn't wide enough to accomodate assembling all the index tiles correctly.
  8. to_top.jpg is a roughly gridded Moon icon that you can click from each of the tile views on my set to get back to the overall index page.
  9. You may delete rukl2.zip, if you wish.
  1. Last, I've made a completely different set of pages for viewing the tiles.
  2. Download my version of the index pages by clicking here,
  3. Save it to the Tiles folder
  4. Unzip the files into the Tiles folder.
  5. You may delete tiles.zip, if you wish.

That's it (that's enough, right?). There are two starting files:
  • Dale_Idx.htm will start up with my version of the pages.
  • Yuri_Idx.htm will start up with the local version of Yuri's pages. Yuri's first first page should look very familiar, except:
  • It'll load a lot faster than from a web site - all the files are on your PC.
  • You don't have to be connected to the net to view the atlas - all the files are on your PC.
  • You won't get any pop-up ads.
  • You won't download any cookies.
  • The links all work - no more script errors.
  • All redundant files have been deleted.

On both Yuri's and my versions of the pages, you'll find links to each other's local index pages and Yuri's home page (the links are on either side of the greyscale Moon image).
It is my sincere hope that the enjoyment you get out of this rendition of this web version was worth the effort expended here, and will inspire you to find one of the remaining copies of Rukl's Atlas of the Moon, and buy it for yourself (not profit).
Images referenced in this text are those originally found in Atlas of the Moon by Antonín Rükl, translated by Jana Hajnovicová, English version edited by Dr. T. W. Rackham. Published (whenever it is) in the USA by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Wausheka, Wisconsin 53187, by arrangement with Reed Consumer Books Ltd., London. IBSN 0-913135-17-8.

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