Alpine Valley rill.

[cotterless45]

Bit wibbly wobbly last night. With the cloud settling in , the only target left was lunar exploration. With the C6r , no filters, we put in a TMb 4.5mm giving x266. Just a dark line along sections of the valley floor showed the rill. Nice little tester for your eyes and optics,

Nick.

[Bodkin]

I had a quick look at the moon last night with my Mak Newt.  I should have tried for the Alpine Valley Rille as I was trying to test my Mak after some repositioning of the woefull Intes focuser.  I am not very knowledgable about the moon's challenging features unfortunately.  I will get out my old 'Observing the Moon' book by North and try to be a bit more structured next time. 

[Peter Drew]

This rille is my Nemesis, despite using a 16" SCT regularly I've yet to see it. Last night I had a good try as the transparency was good but using up to 500x still no show. Could be my eyesight is getting past it. 

[John]

Nice catch Nick 

The lunar illumination was great for the Alpine Valley last night and I found I could trace the central rille along much of it's length with my 12" dob, even as it meandered across the wider part of the valley at it's highlands end. It is a real test of a scope though as it's less than 1km wide and has to have just the right illumination to be visible to us.

The crazy thing about last night was that the images remained crisp even at 530x !. I was using the Ethos 6mm with the 2" Powermate and the view really was mesmerising. I guess thats the nearest I'm going to come to simulating the view from an orbiting spacecraft  

[philj]

Well done Nick, I was out with the big Mak testing eyepieces and was trying for the rille but no go. I noticed the same re conditions, it was a bit wobbly but I too was pushing the mag at times and getting surprising results.