More Moon Madness and a confession

Another find day and night dawned crisp and cold with a large chunk of a bite to it. I tried again with my youngest to see Iridium 45 Flaring. We got out ahead of the scheduled rise of Iridium 45 by about 5 minutes and stared at the heavens, in the correct direction as I'd worked out the approximate track using HA. We watched for about 20 minutes before being summoned for dinner, and again failure.

Now, I'm using a prediction website and occasionally predictions don't happen, things can change. But this makes three in a row, which tends to indicate that it's not actually the predictions that are wrong, but rather, I'm doing something wrong. So what can it be ? That's oh such a good question. I went back to HA, after eating my dinner of course, and studied the plots and times etc for the flare. I spent about 30 minutes doing this. I eventually spotted my error. Such a simple thing. Yet guaranteed to mean that the flare was missed. I forget to check the bearing of the flare from my lcoation. I was looking in the wrong direction. I have now synchronised clocks with HA, and I'm ready for the next one in a couple of days time.

Onto the nights main event. At about 20:30 I got outside again with the scope, I knew this was going to be a short session as I was going out for a drink with some friends, but figured as I had some time, and the sky was clear, it would be a shame to waste it. I didn't have any plans, except to go out and take a look around me. So I setup with the 17mm Hyperion. First off a look at Saturn. She's rising earlier now, so doesn't hide behind the house so much. I was able to make out Titan as well. The other moons all show as being in hiding in the brightness of the planetary glow. I swung my attention, and the scope of course, around to take a look at M45. The sisters are looking very pale and uninteresting at the moment. So moved onto the moon.

The first thing I noticed was that the terminator appeared to have moved a huge leap. That's odd thought I, but picked up a crater of two I hadn't seen before. I spotted Gassendi and Schiller with the Hyperion but decided to quickly pop inside, to swap the Hyperion for the 5mm Ortho, grab my notebook, pen, white torch and Lunar 100 sheets and to take a closer look.

This is odd. I really struggled to achieve focus with the Ortho and the image seemed to almost be swimming. I guess seeing was really quite bad and this was a symptom of that. Still I persevered. Anyway, the first target I found, the new crater, I hadn't seen before, was easy, and the jellyness of the view didn't affect it. I had another look at Gassendi and Schiller with the Ortho. Then as if by magic or maybe the jelly had set properly, the wobbliness subsided. Ah, much better.

I had a look around Copernicus for Copernicus H, and whilst I could see some dark markings on the surface in approximately the correct location, I couldn't be sure so didn't mark that one down. I'll have another go at this during a more organised session, when time is pressing, and the seeing might allow me to push the Mag up.

I spotted what looked like the Hortensius Domes about 1/2 way from Copernicus towards another crater in the direction of the Terminator. After staring through the ep for some time, I was able to see that the patterns of light and shadow on them were different from craters, which is what makes me think they stick up rather then press into the surface. They were in the right sort of location from my charts too, so I ticked that one off. I then moved off to the other side of Copernicus and spotted the Copernicus secondary, not an easy one for me to find, but I'm pretty sure I got it.

Then with a bit of a hint, I found the landing site for Apollo 14 (well, not actually the specific spot, but the Fra Mauro formation. Then I went over to the terminator and had a look at the specks in the darkness. Quite a stunning sight. Then tried to find Flamsted P. I realised that this was hiding from in the darkness I'd just been looking at. Checking my maps I figure it was lurking in the shadows, just out of sight. Perhaps tomorrow.

Then whilst trying to see the Hippalus Rille, I spotted something that looked like the Straightwall, it just leapt from the surface at me. Suddenly, everything I'd seen this evening was in doubt. Oh No!! I checked my maps, I looked again. I was sure that Straightwall was somewhere else, but no, there it was looking at my again. Thumbing it's nose in my general direction. I checked and looked, checked and looked. No the first crater I'd looked at was Gassendi, there was no question, but then what was this object that looked like Straightwall ? That I have no idea, but after about 10 minutes of questioning everything I'd seen and double and triple checking. I decided that this wasn't Straightwall and was in fact something else. Phew. I was rather pleased at that.

I eventually found the Hippalus Rille. Checking the map again, you'd have thought I'd know it all by heart after my Straightwall fiasco, but no. I found there was nothing much more to find in this area at the moment, so moved up to find Mare Frigoris, a nice easy one, then spent a further 10 minutes fixing Gruithuisen Delta and Gamma, probably would have been a lot easier early in the lunar cycle.

I checked my watch, nearly time to go and hunt up some beer. I gathered all my gear together and went back inside. So all in all, for just under an hour's viewing, I'd picked up 8 more for the Lunar 100 (with possibly a ninth, need to try and confirm this somehow, probably need to go to higher mag), giving me a grand total of 43. Nearly Half way, Excellent. Given myself a nasty surprise that, if correct, would have wiped out all I'd seen to that point on the moon, and figured out where I'd been going wrong looking for Flares.