[DougAdams]

19th October 2007

4" Refractor
7:30 - 8:30pm

Just time for a quick peek at the 8 day old moon tonight. Had to head out later, so the grab and go setup of the small refractor certainly beats the old 12" dob hands down. This session wouldn't have happened if I still owned that telescope.

So, a quick hour at the eyepiece, but what an hour. Steady seeing meant my current high power of 154x held up well. My wife arrived home from work half way through and had a quick peek. Her first comment was "wow, steady tonight!".

Archimedes - dawn, the crater was half in shadow. The shadow of the leading rim on the crater floor was inky black and full of contrast. Looked like a row of black fangs, very jagged.

Alps Mountains - up in the northern hemisphere. The mountains were throwing long shadows behind them. The Alpine Valley, a long, wide gash to the north east, dominated the view.

Mount Piton - a favorite feature that always draws my eye. Very bright on the dawn side. I could see a wrinkle ridge on the darker side, highlighted by the very low sun angle. The sun was catching two peaks behind the terminator - looked like a set of white horns rising up out of the shadows. I'm sure one of the "horns" was Mount Pico.

Plato - dawn was just creeping up on the leading rim - the actual crater floor was in darkness still. Wish I had this seeing tomorrow - be great for craterlet spotting.

Ptolemaeus / Alphonsus / Arzachel - just past dawn and really interesting to compare when they are on or around the terminator. Ptolemaeus has no peak, just a wide flat crater. Alphonsus has a tiny peak that casts a small shadow - perhaps this is a flooded crater and that is all that is left of the peak? Arzachel seems to be a deep crater with a prominent central peak, and lots of terrace detail in the crater walls. The deep craters Herchel and Lassell flank these three craters - both are just deep pits of darkness.

Jupiter - the seeing is so steady, I swing around to Jupiter. It's well down in the west, and only packing around 30" of disk now. Pleasing view though, 4 bands very visible. More bands flick in and out, along with detail in the bands I can see. The two closest moons, Ganymede and Io, resolved into disks. I sketched the view to identify the moons later. No sign of the Great Red Spot, however later confirmed it was out on the limb and about to disappear.

20th October 2007

9pm - 10pm.

Another session tonight - hunting craterlets in Plato. The seeing was nowhere near as good as last night, and the swimming pool effect was there. I could pick out one craterlet about half the time, and saw hints of two more. The seeing wouldn't hold enough to be totally sure. Bit frustrating. I spent nearly an hour on Plato, but scooted along to Clavius in the southern hemisphere for a bit - there is some amazing stuff in and around this large crater. Had a good look at the Straight Wall, too.