Some time on the moon

Well, the sky is still murky and cloudy, and even the moon was looking poor through the bins. But I decided I'd dig out the scope and setup as this would give me some practice with the webcam. I setup, powered up, aligned as usual. Dropped in the webcam with the usual tubing, and odd, I couldn't get focus. What's going on here I wondered ? After much playing and fiddling with tubes, I found that what works for Saturn, doesn't work for the moon and instead of the prism diagonal, used the normal mirror diagonal. Ah well, something to remember for the future. I took 2 sets of 2000 frames and 1 set of 1000 frames and some dark frames. I had some help from my cat providing KISS (Kat Induced Seeing Shakes) which really didn't help much.



After doing the avi's, I changed the webcam to the 5mm Hyperion for some visual observing. I tried using the 2x Barlow, but the image became too dark because of the misty cloud covering the moon. So I settled for just the Hyperion, giving my 80x. I started at Mare Crisium, a nice easy to find reference point, hey you can see it in bins. From there I took the normal route for this point in the Lunar phase, past Cleomedes and Buckhardt to Geminus. Nearby Messala and on around the limb to Endymion. Then back to Mare Crisium and set off in the other direction. Past Apollonius to Mare Fecunditatis, on into Langrenus. Nearby I landed in, Bilharz, Atwood and Naonobu. From there to Vendalinus. Then after I produced one of my patented quick, yet poor sketch for identifying craters, using Petavius, Snellius, Stevinus and Furneris as referent points, I also got Wrottsely, Hase, Adams, Furneris C and Fraunhofer. That was it for tonight, and I think I was lucky to get that much. The view was getting worse as I was looking, and has now disappeared entirely into the clouds, all except a faint tantalising glow in the clouds itself. Ah well. Maybe as the moon grows fuller, the clouds will stay away more. I can but hope.

I snapped a photo of the moon to see if I could show the mistiness.



It was interesting to note, that this entire session was carried out in normal day clothes and not wrapped in piles of clothes, coats, hats and gloves. Actually rather pleasant from a temperature point of view, shame about the view really.