Scope: C100 EDR 100mm/900mm

Lenses: Celestron Plossl 20, TeleVue Plossl 8, 2xBarlow

Location: Back Garden

Visibility: Excellent

Light Pollution: Dusk

A nice clear evening and an excellent opportunity to take a look at the crescent moon. First identified the two seas Mare Crisium and Mare Fecunditatis at 45x then took a look at the Atlas and Hercules craters, noting Atlas' central peak.

We then viewed Mare Crisium at 112.5x and spotted Peirce, Yerkes, Picard and Lick. At this phase we noticed four very well defined craters to the West and identified them as Glaisher, Proclus, Hill and Carmichael.

Next we turned our attention to Mare Fecunditatis and craters Messier, Pickering (or Messier-A) and the rays extending to the West. I could imagine the meteroid bouncing to create Messier and then Messier-A and sending material shooting across the surface of the sea as described in the book. Using the Barlow to achieve 225x worked to some extent but worsened seeing. Whilst in the neighbourhood we took a look at Langrenus.

We then scooted back up and identified the chain of craters Cleomedes, Burkhardt, Geminus and Messala. We could see as described in the book that Massala indeed looked older than the other craters as the sides were very worn down.

We then took some time scanning across the Southern Highlands and out to the southern pole. A single high peak was visible separate from the rest of the light area of the moon.

At this point the moon began to hide behind nextdoor's house. So we decided to have another go at viewing Venus. In the past our views of Venus have been disappointing but we gave it a go. This time was different, we could make out the phase fairly well at just 45x. Moving up to 112.5x and 225x we could clearly make out its gibbous phase. I decided to give my new moon filter a go on it and found it reduced the glare a lot and made the phase far easier to make out. Our scope is generally very good at eliminating glare but Venus is usually too much for it.

I noticed a yellowish star appear over the roof of our house and decided to take a look in the hopes that it was Saturn. It was! We excitedly watched Saturn which we had been missing recently. We found the filter did not improve our view and without the filter we could make out what I assume was Titan.

Great little lunar and planetary session and we got to bed at a reasonable hour to boot!