Visiting Luna - 19th March

I was out early yesterday evening, and the sky was clear. What's this, no clouds. There was the Moon, nearly full, shining brightly in the tree tops. As the sky got darker, other pinpricks started to appear, Saturn, Mars and Sirius being the first to burn on through. The Moon was very close to Saturn and made quite a pretty sight all on there own. Of course this was all using the old Mk1 eyeball. A half hearted attempt was made to spot Lacrosse 3 skate across the sky near Luna and Saturn, but as I was under some trees at the time, there wasn't a lot of chance to see this minuscule dot. Then as tradition dictates, as I was getting ready to head home to where all my gear was, what should happen, but those grey monstrous objects should roll across and cover the sky in murk. Typical.

A few hours later, as I'm sitting at the PC trying to do some image editing of, well it looks like, Perseus and M45 widefield. I'm not sure where it came from, but I think I took it the same night as my Leo stack. It still needs a lot of work, there's no darks or anything else to stack with it. I was getting fed up with the lack of progress so I wandered over the to the window and took a look out. There were still some clouds up there, but there were gaps and the Moon was poking her nose out. So I figured why not (I wasn't sure what I was going to use for the SLT mount alignment) grabbed the gear and went outside.

Here I made my first mistake. Expecting to only get maybe 20 minutes in the gaps, I didn't wrap up as I normally would. I plonked down the mount, plugged in the power tank, dropped in the TAL x2 barlow and the 5mm Hyperion. Powered up, set the date and time, selected one star align, checked around, spotted Betelguese and went for that. After alignment, I slewed around to the Moon and set the tracking rate to Lunar. Grabbed a chair, hmm, third mistake. Sitting on the chair, I could look at the large expanse of metal that is the side of the eyepiece.

What happened to mistake number 2 I hear you cry. Ah well, I forget to level the mount. So, I powered it all down again, lowered the legs to about half height, leveled, powered back up, entered the time again!!, one star aligned on Betelguese, slewed to the moon, set the tracking rate to Lunar and we were off.

So running at 160x, I started off finding Aristarchus, nice and easy to find, it's so bright and out towards what's left of the terminator. Doesn't half move on quickly. I noticed something odd and it threw me for a while. The Field of View that I could see at 160x was so much bigger than what I'd been looking at before. My last viewing of the moon, I ended up using the 5mm Ortho and the barlow as the mount wouldn't take the weight of the Hyperion and Barlow combined and this showed a very restricted view by comparison. In one respect this made things much easier, the Hyperion, I find, is a much easier eyepiece to use, but having the wide FOV, finding craters became a little harder. Navigating was easier, but the landmarks appeared to be further apart.

Anyway, enough, on with the Moon. I spent some time looking through the mush at Aristarchus looking for the Schroter Valley. I don't think the seeing was very good. Still, after maybe 3 minutes studying that region, suddenly, as if a cloud had been parted, the inverted horseshoe shape leaped up out of the landscape. From here, I found Herodotus and Prinz. I looked for the Rilles as they are listed in the Lunar 100, but according to my Atlas I have as much chance as the proverbial snowball does as I need a much bigger scope to see them, so I gave up. Still I did spot the Montes Harbinger Range and I picked up Krieger too just nearby. Then as I started looking for Sinus Iridum and Sinus Roris, I noticed a funny looking lump nearby. This showed up from the way the light and shadow played on the surface. After a little careful checking I figured this for the Rumker hills, and it was much easier to see this time around, than last time. Maybe I'm just getting better at seeing Lunar features.

Anyway, after spotting Sinus Iridum and Roris, I went to look for Pythagoras. I managed to get all twisted up in the orientation, and started out looking in completely the wrong direction, but soon worked out I'd been daft and headed back and spotted it. Then I moved across (using the slew control on the handset but slowed down) to find Plato. From here I moved up a little way to find Archimedes. This area was hard to see things on, as there is just so little contrast at the moment, but concentrating and starring helped to reveal the craters. I then moved onto Mare Serenitatis to try and find Menelaus. I used the ray that shoes though the Mare as a guide, following it to the South I found Menelaus. I thought I'd then have a go at finding Proclus. I wasn't expecting to necessarily have an easy time of finding this one as it's in the washed out area with so little contrast, but I was astonished at how easy it really was. The crater walls almost glowed, like there were coated in phosphorescent moss. An astonishing sight.

After studying Proclus for a while I moved off to try and find some more craters. I started at Tycho and used this as a reference point. I started by following a double ray (I hope that's the correct term here) to the North East trying to spot Bullialdus, but after some time hunting, I wasn't sure I'd found it, so I gave up for now and moving a little way South, I went looking for Clavius. I'd spotted this easily before, but I starred and starred and yet couldn't make it out. Ths contract thing again. After a while though, I began to pick out the line of craters that arc through Clavius and knew I was looking in the right place, then after but a moment more, I picked out the walls and there we were. Schiller was an easy spot with it's distinctive elongated shape. Using Schiller and Clavius as guide point, I found Bettinus and I think I could just about make out the edge of Bailey right on the limb. From there around to Schikard, which I used as a pointer to pick up Vieta and Cavendish. Working my way along the surface, next up was Merseene and onto Gassendi.

I then went looking for Sirsalis and the so far elusive Sirsalis Rille. According to my Atlas, the rille should definitely be visible in my little scope. So I found Sirsalis, it's an odd crater, looks a bit like a giant camel has been for a wander, centered it in the eyepiece, and starred. Again it took a few moments, but as my eye got used to the surface, more detail slowly began to show, and then, as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared. Sorry, I don't know where that came from, the Rille collapsed back below the surface and into view. I'm astonished at how often this happens but it's true, the longer you look the more you see. So anyway, another one ticked off the Lunar 100. The next three in the atlas I couldn't see as they were hiding in the Terminator (serves me right for using the maps from the wrong day, ho hum). So I went and had a look at Reiner and Reiner Gamma. This is an odd looking thing, the crater is just that, but Gamma is a peculiar swirl of lighter bits on the surface.

From Reiner then I went on to look at Marius, and inwards to Copernicus. This about completed my guided tour from the 13 day page of the atlas, so I turned to the 11 day page and went around that too. Using Copernicus as the referent point, I went and had a look at Sinus Medii and Sinus Asperitatis, not so easy to see, but distinct. I moved South, found Plato and used that to locate Fontenelle. Moving along East I came to Herschel, which I centred and from there found both Harpalus and Philolaus. I'm sure that these would have been easier to see a day or two earlier, but the clouds didn't want me to. Moving South from Harpalus, I found the Mons Gruithuisen I think, well some little bumps in about the right place. Using the location of the Mons and Aristarchus as reference I found Euler. I hunted around for Lambert, but couldn't quite work out where it was, so I moved onto Sinus Iridum and used that as a marker for finding Helicon. This combined with Euler let me find Lambert.

I moved back up to Aristarchus and Copernicus and using these, I found Kepler by forming a triangle with Kepler at the point. Using the same technique from Kepler and Copernicus I found Lansberg. Then spotted on the map, what look like a smaller Sinus, but I suspect it's a bit small, using Gassendi as a guide found Letronne. From Gassendi, across Mare Humorum I picked up Doppelmayer. Using Gassendi and Dopplemeyer as triangulation points, I finally found Bullialdus, right where I'd been looking earlier. Ah well, missed it on the first go, but I found it anyway. From here I found Ramsden and Hainzel.

I gave up at this point, after spending about an hour and a half studying the moon as the cold had seeped inside and my toes were beginning to feel like ice cubes. I probably should have stopped a little earlier, but I wanted to finish as much of the pointed objects as possible on the 13 day and 11 day old pages from the Atlas. This objective complete, I used the slew controls to put the scope back in it's normal rest position, powered down and gathered everything up to go indoors again. I was cold enough, that I didn't even take a quick look at Saturn before heading in.

Then I made my final mistake of the night, on the way to the back door, I stepped in a patch of mud on the decking and carried it into the house, oops. Gonna have to clear that up to day now it's dried.

So what lessons did I take away,

1) Never trust that the expected short gap will be a short gap and dress expecting it to be really cold for hours (which it was)
2) Always set the height and level the mount before powering up for the first time
3) Make sure my boots are clean before walking on the carpet, it hurts less later

A small discovery, the Hyperions are just about parfocal with the Tal x2 Barlow.

So I added one to the Lunar 100 (that's 61 now), got really cold, but was really glad I'd got out to spend some time under the stars, looking at the moon.