20:20-21:12 CST (
I hadn’t been observing in a while, the skies were clear with some dust left over from the previous nights storms. And the temperature was 65 F. I brought my Astro-Tech AT80ED out to check out the near conjunction of the Moon and Mars. The Moon was at 0.56 waxing gibbous phase and Mars was just to its southeast. Jupiter and Venus were also approaching each other visually but they were already behind obscuring trees.
I observed the Moon for a while with my Stellarview 8 mm (70x), 82 degree eyepiece. Many features were illuminated along the terminator. Among the most notable were the Apennine Mountains, Aristillus crater and its debris field, Autolycus crater, the Alpine Valley, the Sea of Vapours, and the rugged crater field of the southern hemisphere. Another feature that I’m not sure that I’ve observed before was the Hyginus Rille, which was really standing out along with the crater Hyginus bisecting the rille.
I went ahead in my 4 mm (140x), 82 degree eyepiece for “in orbit” view of the Moon. The surface details were still sharp and I spent some good time “flying” over the lunar surface. I even found “Mickey Mouse), Müller crater near Ptolemaeus. Archimedes crater was just coming into daylight and the crater rim appeared to be two, concentric crater walls. I’m sure it was just a play of light with the steep crater wall that has partially collapsed.
I went ahead and took a look at Mars with the same power (140x) since it was only about 1.5 moon widths away. The Earth is rapidly pulling away from Mars so it is smaller than my last observation. I could still make out a dark region near the middle and a whitening in the southern hemisphere. Switching in my 15 mm (37x), 82 degree eyepiece I could see Mars and all of the Moon in the same field of view.
The Moon was the “star” of the show for this night so I turned my telescope back to Luna. I was mesmerized by the ultra-smoothness of the northern part of the Sea of Showers that was just coming into view at the foot of the Alps Mountains. I did observe a distinctive ridge of some sort between Mt. Piton and the crater Aristillus that I’ll to investigate.
It was fascinating to watch lunar details slowly emerging from the depths of darkness along the terminator in just 30 minutes time. Given that a lunar day is about a month long, one wouldn’t think you could see any changes in a short time.
It was a work night so I stopped observing for the night and brought in my little scope for the night.