Lunar 100 - Over half way

Another clear night, I've lost count now, but I'm loving it. First up, another go at spotting satellites. I spent about 30 minutes on HA studying the plots, working out where to look. There were two possibles at about 1830 yesterday. Cosmos 1184 and UARS. My youngest and I got out with 5 minutes to spare, allow some time for acclimating the eyes, see a few stars. I was quite surprised by how clear the evening sky seemed to be. I'm sure I could make out 3 or maybe 4 stars in Ursa Minor. Normally I can only pick out Polaris. Ursa Minor tends to hide in the glow from Gatwick Airport. First up, UARS put on quite a nice show as it rose from behind the house, and slowly faded out into the big dipper. I didn't manage to see Cosmos 1184. Seeing these fleet little objects I'm finding is pretty tough.

At the request of the little one, I popped inside and grabbed both pairs of Binoculars, the 12x70 for me and the 7x35 for him. We had a look at M42, the Sisters M45 together. I had a quick look at the double cluster in Perseus, the Leaping minnow and only half a smiley face in Auriga (washed out by the moon). Then we both took a look at the moon, and he had a look at a couple of passing planes. Then back inside for a while.

A little over 2 hours, and a bit of work, later, I was back outside, this time with the scope for another session studying the moon, and grabbing a few more of the Lunar 100. I'd discussed the movement of the terminator on the lunar surface yesterday on SGL and was still astonished as to how much more of the Lunar surface was revealed tonight, compared to last night. I started out with the 5mm Ortho giving me 80x, and had trouble getting focus, I thought there must be something wrong with my eyes or something. Anyway, first up in my sights was Mersenius, I found this reaonsbly easily, the shadows caused by the angle of sunlight showed it off pretty nicely. Then I had a look for the De Gasparis rilles. I couldn't see anything at 80x, so dropped in the barlow and went to 160x.

I knew the moon was there, the FOV was filled with a large white blur, but I could only barely make out any of the features. Now I know what poor seeing is. The view was really bad. I removed the barlow as it wasn't even worth trying, went back to 80x and just concentrated. Even at 80x, the jelly wobble of the moon meant things swam in and out of focus, and occasionally became like crystal. In one of these crystalline moments, I saw what I think were the rilles I'd been looking for. Anyway, all that playing with jelly had taken some time, and so I moved on for a look at Schickard, as I turned to check on the Lunar 100 map, I stretched my leg out and belted the third leg of my tripod. ARGGH!!!. Thankfully the entire kit and caboodle didn't come crashing down, which was a definite bonus. Must remember about that when I'm sitting with my legs under the tripod. Don't want to do that one too often.

Anyway, I got aligned again, managed to jiggle my way back to the correct part of the moon and found Schickard. Then tried to find Wargentin, but this was doing a darn good job of hiding from me. I moved back to Schiller and had a good look just below and managed to pick out the Schiller-Zuchius Basin, that wasn't easy. From there back up to a less angled area and picked out Flamsted P, not hiding in the shadows today. From there I moved further up and found Aristachus. I coudn't believe quite how bright this crater looks against the backgound surroundings, and after looking for a while, I think I was able to see some darker markings, could be wishful eyes though. Schroters Valler was nice and obvious, drawing a sort of horseshoe shape
from Aristarchus. I'd seen a great picture of this just before I got outside so new exactly what I was looking for. I was also able to pick out the Aristarchus Plateau, in the same area. I used the same trick as for the domes, the light and shade areas show up differently from craters.

Then I hopped back aways and had a look around for Posidonius, this was a real tough one to see. There's no contrast in that area to show the edges as the entire region is bathed in light. It looks to be a pretty big crater though, and once I'd managed to work out where it was supposed to be, I could make out it's shape. I'll revisit this one when the terminator is in a better position so there's contrast in the area. I then realised that the Marius Hills ought to just be showing along the line of the terminator, and gently nudged the scope to point that way. After a few minutes of searching, I was able to pick them up, again because of the differences in the way the shadows fall.

Then I had a good luck around the Lunar 100 map to see if I could work out where the Mare/Highland dichotomy would be located. After a moments looking, I had a brief moment of epiphany followed by a slump into stupidity. I couldn't believe how dumb I'd been. Here I was, I'd been looking and searching the moon for this object (number 3 on the list) since I'd started, and it had been staring at me from across most of the face of the moon. Talk about can't see the wood for the trees, or should it be patterns for the craters, something like that anyway. So I ticked that one off the list, and decided the I'd had enough of the moon for one night, after that shocker.

I lifted up the scope, and moved so I could look around the house for a brief 5 minute viewing session of Saturn. I can't be doing with much more than that at the moment as I can't track objects, and trying to jiggle the photo tripod back on target is not an easy task. Still, even that was worthwhile. After studying this little beauty for a short while, I'm sure I could make out the gap between the rings and the planet on the edges, and the shadow of the planet on the rear of the rings, well rear as I'm looking at it anyway, does a planet have a front and a rear ?

After tonights session, I've ticked off a further 11 objects, bringing my total to 54. Yippee, over half way there. Now for the hard part. The last half.