Hi everyone,

Note - entry written Thurs 17th Jan

Well, its getting busy at work, and at home now. Coupled with work, my daughter is approaching the end of her A-Levels so she is massively stressed out with both her course work, and her uni applications. I can’t quite believe that my little girl is going to be leaving home in September. Only seems like yesterday that she was getting ready for her first day at school . . . . I am going to find that day very hard I think. We spend our lives looking after them, and raising them for this moment, but it doesn’t make it easier does it?

Anyway- that day is nine months ahead of us, so I won’t dwell on it just yet!!

Last night saw a decent break in the clouds. According to the forecast, a cold front had moved through and lo and behold the sky cleared mid to late afternoon, and the temp dropped noticeably. I took th tube out about 7:30pm, and left it a good hour to cool. Following my little process, I set the mount up inside, and then carried the whole thing outside. Mounted the tube, balanced it and I was ready. Again, I only carried out a rough polar alignment – looking through the centre of the mount I centred Polaris and I was ready to go. The evenings viewing was all about the Moon, so I had set up the scope in the garden, rather than round the back of the house. Yeah there was a lot of LP from the street light which I have dubbed Rigel, on account of its colour and brightness, but as I was just looking at the moon it wasn’t too bad.

I started off at 48x with my 25mm and spent a good half an hour just taking in the view. The atmosphere seemed quite steady, and I took in the amazing detail along the terminator. About this time, my 11 year old lad came out with his coat and hat on! I moved the tube round for him, and he spent half an hour out with me which was lovely! He kept looking through the eyepiece, and then up at the moon, not quite believing the detail he could see! We upped the mag to 120x and while the image was a bit dimmer, the seeing was still very good and steady, and between us we looked at Sinus Iridium, Plato, Clavius, Tycho and Copernicus. He was a model student lol! Asking me loads of questions about what he was looking at. He only went in when he got too cold bless him!!

So, another successful night with the 150PL. I have begun to tick off various items of the Lunar 100 list. I want to take my time with it, and not do it all really quickly. I also want to go back to various locations at different phases / illuminations, so as to pick out more detail in them. I have downloaded an Excel list of the features, and added a big map of the Moon showing their locations. I have also downloaded a really good Moon Atlas which is helping ID loads of smaller craters – the smallest I saw last night was about 10 miles across I think.

Anyway – here’s hoping the skies keep clear for us all!!

Cheers

Nige