A few more for the 100 - 19th Feb

Another clear and crisp day once the mist had burnt off. I know this isn't going to continue. All day I saw patches of clouds skip across the sky, but overall, they were only small. When evening came, there was what looked like a wall of clouds to the south and the moon was playing peepo through some lighter stuff in the east. Still, there was enough clear sky for some early evening observing with the youngest.

First up, we failed to see the Satellites USA193 and UARS. I blame the clouds, and I have to admit, probably not being eagle eyed enough. He was using the 7x35 bins to have a look around, he was eager to see the satellites through them, even though I pointed out, they would be really hard to spot. Then I got the scope and Hyperion out and we both had a look through that. First up the Pleiades, much better looking than previous nights, the moon was in hiding. Slewed the scope a little to have a quick look at the Hyades. This is a little too big to fit in the FOV, but we had a look at the Aldeberan section. Then on around to M42 and Cr69. Then the moon decided to come out to play from behind the clouds, so I swung the scope to there, and we both had a good look. I didn't try and point out any of the Lunar 100 to him, whilst the larger objects are visible with this eyepiece and the rotation effects of the Earth are ignorable, using the 5mm ortho is tricky enough for me, and I pretend to have a clue what I'm doing.

Then back in for a while. I thought that would be it, as the clouds from the south were moving in, but no. About 2130 I was pleasantly surprised to look out and find the sky clear again. Excellent, so I grabbed all the gear and headed back out to look at the moon again, but this time with the 5mm ortho. I also grabbed the camping lantern to light my notes up with, much easier than a little torch.

Seeing surface features seemed so much harder. Not because of the seeing, this was so much better than the previous night, although there was still some ep dancing going on. It was just that with the terminator so far to the edge (limb ??) the surface features all looked so flat. So first up, was to try and find Wargentin, and this I managed. I even managed to push the mag up to 160x with the barlow and whilst the view was wobbly, the details were visible.

It was whilst I was looking at Wargentin and the surrounds I realised I'd made a mistake with a crater identification. I thought I'd found Cruger, but I hadn't I'd previously found Grimaldi. It took me quite a while to work this one out. And even then it was only after dashing in and out and checking on VMA and having seen a photo of the Cruger area that enabled me to figure it out. Still, All correct now. I now really have Cruger nailed. Phew. I then tried for the Sirsalis Rilles, but wasn't sure quiet what I was looking for and couldn't be sure I'd seen them. So I moved on and went back to Grimaldi. What threw me with Grimaldi was the description in the Lunar 100. It says it's small. Through my scope, it certainly doesn't look small, and I think this is probably how I got confused in with Cruger in the first place. I checked Grimaldi on VMA, but that didn't really help much, so back to Google Images and found a superb image showing what I was looking for and it, and so now properly id'ing it, I ticked it off.

Then I moved on to try and find the Rumker hills. Another toughy. After spending 5 minutes studying the area, which intially just looked very flat, I saw something that looked like a bump on the surface. This was mainly down to the way the light falling on the surface and the shadow's being cast. This just looked different to the craters. I referred to the Lunar 100 map again, back to the scope. Studied some more. All the while jiggling the scope to keep the FOV in the right place. I gotta do something about this. I hope to have a Nexstar SLT mount soon, that'll make tracking a lot easier. Anyway, I popped to the puter and checked on VMA, again all seemed to be in the right place. I did a search on Google Images, found a few, and they confirmed the location. I went back to the scope again, found the bump again, then ticked it off on the list.

I then went back and had another go at the Sirsalis rilles. I checked on VMA and google images. I went back to the scope and checked again. After a few minutes study, I did see some lines in the area, but I'm not sure they were the rilles. They looked more like ripples in the surface and not like the other rilles I have seen. I have yet to tick this one off and I'll keep going at this one. The angles may be such at the moment that I just can't see them.

I then went to try and find Bailly. I wasn't sure from the map quite what this should look like, so I went back to VMA and Google Images. I soon discovered that this was quite an easy target, found it and ticked it off.

In total I was looking at the moon for about 90 minutes. I noticed then that the temperature seemed to have plummeted and my RDF was misting over. The scope still seemed to be ok. The paper of my notebook and the Lunar 100 had also all gone soggy. I decided at that point enough was enough, and ducked back inside to thaw. Not such a good night for hunting on the Lunar 100, only 4 new ones, but thankfully I've also managed to make a correction. Equally, I suspect that most of the rest will show up much better when near the terminator, so now it's a waiting game. I'm now up to 58 of the 100.

Hopefully the weather will stay clear, and I can manage to get out at the right time to try and capture some images from the total Lunar eclipse this evening, but the forecast is for fog from 2100 through till the morning.