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Hadley Rille - at last !
Hi there,
Well, its taken a long time but yesterday morning (Sat 21 Jan), I finally saw Hadley Rille through my scope. I think it would have been the day before Last Quarter (?).
Woke up (by accident around 2.30am) saw it was clear, grabbed my 8" DOB to check out Saturn, which was simply brilliant. Stayed observing all my favourites,then maybe around 4am, turned the scope to the moon, focused on the Apennine area and bingo, there was the complete length of the Rille smiling up at me.
The 'seeing' was quite good and at 200X all the details of the Rille could be seen. Considering the width of the Rille is similar to the Grand Canyon (and it looks like a thin pencil line) it give a great visual comparison to the size of the massive surrounding mountains.
The area with Apollo 15's Scott & Irwin stood at the Rille is easily visible.
Interestingly,my 90mm F11 refractor couldn't show the Rille, in an article I saw, Charles Wood (Lunar 100 Card) said a 75mm could detect it.
This morning (yes got up early for another 2am till dawn session) had another try for the Rille but alas, the exact area was covered in shadow, this seems to be a common problem in trying to see it.
Jupiter was also providing fantastic views too, lots of detail on offer.
These past few weeks have taught me one thing - I like it when there's no clouds......in fact I even prefer my suburban light pollution to complete cloud cover.....
cheers all,
Ian
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