Moon Child - 9 April

Finally, a clear night and I managed to get out with the scope. It's been clear here for the past few nights, but due to other commitments the opportunity just wasn't there. I got outside just after 9pm and started the setup. Leveled the mount, powered up and started the align. Only to discover that I'd previously knocked the Red Dot Finder out of alignment. Damn. OK. I couldn't find Polaris in the 5mm Ortho, so I manually slewed the scope to the moon, I figured I ought to be able to find this nice bright object and roughly aligned the RDF, then slewed back to Polaris to complete. Then finished the SkyAlign. Then back to the moon, for a look at this young 3/4 day old.

First off, I decided I'd do a comparison test between the Baader Fringe Killer and the Baader Contrast Booster filters. Apart from a stronger yellow cast from the contrast booster and a dimmer view, I was unable to detect any difference in the actual image. I then popped in the Lunar Filter (ND96) as even this thin sliver was hurting my eye. I then figured I'd have a go at a subjective test to put my mind at ease. Something that had been bugging me was whether there was any apparent perceived effect on the magnification from having a wider Field of View. I compared what was seen through the 5mm Ortho and Hyperion and there is no difference. My memory fooled me into thinking there might be some issue.

Having sorted that out, I dropped in my x2 barlow, taking the Magnification up to x160 and went looking for Craters. Hmm, there's lots of craters. I started out on Mare Crisium, nice and easy reference point and first up was Picard, an odd looking little crater with black surrounding it. I noticed 3 other craters in the Mare, one by Picard and the other two on the opposite side. Hmm, these are not listed in my atlas, so I made a very small and poor sketch, and looked them up on VMA (Virtual Moon Atlas) afterwards, they are, Yerkes, Peirce and Swift. It's nice to be able to put names to craters, those that I looked up after, I'll label as (VMA). On the opposite side of the Mare from these I also spotted Eimmart. Then I headed out around the limb. I haven't got my Lunar compass sorted out, or attached to the end of my scope yet, so I can't say if this is North or South, however, I went past Macrobius to Cleomedes. Then onto Geminus. Between Cleomedes and Geminus I found Burkhard, Trolles and Bernoulli (VMA).

From there, I continued on, finding, Messala, Franklin and Atlas. Hercules was playing hide and seek in the shadow of the Terminator, and didn't want to put his nose into the light tonight. Then onto Endymion. Behind Endymion, I think I was just about able to see Mare Humbodltianium.

Then back to Mare Crisium, and off in the other direction. My first stop was at Appolonius, then I spotted an odd triangular pattern of craters on the edge of Mare Fecunditatis. The biggest of the three is Bilharz, the other two are Atwood (VMA) and Naonobu (VMA). From here onto Langrenus and I was able to make out the central peak quite easily. I'd not noticed this before, so either the seeing was better tonight, or my eyes are getting better at spotting things. From there onto Vendilinus, which almost looks like a macro view of a Mandelbrot set with the way the nearby craters are aligned. They are Lane, Holden and Lohse (all 3 VMA). The other one on my little sketch, that I thought was part of Vendilinus, actually turned out to be Petavius B (VMA).

I believe I may have spotted Mare Smythii, lurking right on the edge, VMA seems to confirm this as possible tonight. If so, then that's another on for the Lunar 100.

From there to Petavius, where after a few moments study, I was able to work out where the Palitzch Valley is, although given the size of it, it really shouldn't have taken me that long. And just next door, the crater Wrottesly. I couldn't make out the rille in the floor of Petavius, but that's not really a big surprise with my little scope, although I thought I'd have a look anyway. From here to Snellius, Stevinus, Funeris and Funeris B (VMA). I also spotted Mare Australe. Then finally onto Janssen. This area looks like someone decided to have some fun with an industrial digger and rip out large chunks of the surface. It took me a little while to locate Janssen, but I did it by finding the odd camel hoof shaped double crater of Steinheil and Watt. I spent quite some time looking at Janssen, hoping that I might be able to pick up some detail on the floor but to no avail, my scope's just not big enough.

There's a lot of other craters I missed, but as I'd run out of targets in my book, I decided it was time to move on. I told the mount to Goto Saturn. It started to slew towards Saturn, then went straight past and carried on for a further 45 degrees. Hmm, thought I, what happened there. I manually bought the mount back to Saturn and told it to Align on Saturn. I got a message that the Align had failed. Odd. I powered it off and started from scratch. During the alignment, I caught sight of a streaker, dashing East to West, towards the moon. Bit of a wow there. Twice the Skyalign failed and I don't know why. I checked the level again, checked the powertank connections and charge, all good. Did the align again, this time it worked. Phew.

Anyway, used the Goto to get to Saturn, and there she was. I could only make out the one moon. My garden now has more lights being shown into it, as the Neighbours are now using the rear bedrooms more. Hope this is a one off. I swapped the Hyperion for the 17mm and as I was beginning to get cold, I used the Goto, as I have it, to grab me a few M's before going back inside. My little scope really struggled with a number of these, and even the Globular clusters were just grey blobs. Ah, well. Here's what I looked at, M13, which I only picked in case, I'd thought it was still below the house rooves, but that gives me Hercules for the constellation list to. M64, M3, M53, M94, M67, a sweet little cluster in the 17 mm Hyperion. And finished it all off with a Bee watch in M44.

A most enjoyable night under the stars, grabbing a number of craters, 1 for the Lunar 100, 1 new Constellation and 4 new Messiers.