Fraunhoffer

Hadley Rille

Ive been trying to find this little crater (6km. dia.) and its 'rille' for about a year. Success.
I was feeling a bit tired so had planned nothing in particular except enjoying the ride of another clear sky and getting lost on the lunar surface. Just plonked the tripod on the usual 'dots' and levelled it up. No polar alignment or finder (its that bright moon) set the tracking to lunar rate and looked.

"The more you look the more you see" seems very apt for the moon. It wasnt long before I was captivated by another clear and steady view of craters, rilles, fault lines, different shades of basalt and enormous hills and mountains. The straight wall was visible again looking like someone had taken a pen and drawn across the lunar surface.

As I edged around Mare Ibrium and the Apennine mountains the large flat floored Archimedes came into view with its terraced walls and smooth floor looking like a freshly painted wall. Running along the edge I noticed a few small creaters and then a brightly illuminated line. This turned out to be a corner of Hadley Rille which was just catching the light in the right direction. It is quite a small feature and needed the 5mm eyepiece in the c8 to get a decent view. Fortunatley the air was steady and the moon at a high altitude to be able to use this. I tried a few different filters, orange seeming to give the best view, although after a while i just returned to no filter and just looked. The more I looked the more I saw of the Hadley Rille and was able to follow it for some distance.

Apollo 15 landed in the smooth patch just upper left of the crater in Palus Putredinis (marsh of decay). Strange name.

It was approaching 9:30 and I needed to think about packing up and turning in was so pleased to see this after a year of waiting on such a short session.

 

Thanks Mike. 

 

Just wondered if anyone has a better idea to locate the skywatcher handcontroller than the standard tripod clip they supply.

I find the controller doesn't clip in very well without fiddling about in the dark and jogging the tripod and it always seems to be on the wrong leg for where I want to look.

Yesterday the curley lead got caught under the clip when I pulled the thing out and the lead pulled out - easily put right but a but frustrating at the time.

Maybe a hook and loop or something under the spreader plate ??

I've not seen the sky so clear and still for some time. 8 and 5mm on the c8 provided magnificent views of the lunar surface and I was spoilt for choice of interesting things to look at with so much detail visible.

The straight wall appeared like a sharp edge to the terminator when I started so I looked at other things whilst waiting for the sun to rise. 

The Rima Ariadaeus rille was nicely lit along its whole length. It's huge, and runs over s small range of hills at one point which I guess must have been formed later.

Then I stepped over to the area around Archimedes which is rich in fault and shrinkage features. My. Piton was huge and cast a massive Shadow.

The sun had now risen over the straight wall and the shadow cast by the linear 250m drop was very clear.  The crater Birt has a smaller crater in its run which allowed a beam of light to shine through and illuminate the opposite wall. Awesome.

As the moon was beginning to set I went on to see some lovely double stars. A very enjoyable evening.

 

Fabulous report. Thank you. 

 

I didn't stay out long because everything was being blown about on the gusty wind. The sky looked very clear and I had a great view of this area following several shrinkage fault lines.

The Apollo 17 landing site it towards the upper right, not far from the chain of 4 mountains.

 

Just very slightly. I lazily left it in after  Orion and M1. Sort of difference between, there's something there and there might be something there. The UHC-e is a bit wider than UHC and supposed to include the carbon emission line. I don't know if it's emitting any carbon, but it helped me find it. Nothing dramatic and not as different as when looking at a nebula.

 

Tracked it down eventually last night with a c8 and uhc-e filter. Not the best conditions and it was just a faint barely visible haze with a brighter centre, from the garden.

8 minutes ago, acr_astro said:

Hi,

an excellent idea to show and locate the sketches!

I went for a different approach - a bit more unsorted

Clear skies

Achim

very nice collection of sketches.

 

29 minutes ago, Jiggy 67 said:

Needs framing and putting on the wall!!

Thank you for the compliment. I was wondering about that. The moon image was a mosaic so it might enlarge and print reasonably.

 

 

A composite map of 8 recent sketches.

Produced with PaintshopPro.

1 hour ago, Mike JW said:

Paul - wise words. All too often I get bogged down in detail.

Fraunhoffer - Rheita Valley - tricky to sketch this area as the valley does not readily stand out. Yet careful scrutiny reveals subtle features. I have only attempted the sketch once. Good to see your interpretation.

Messier craters - nice and easy. Your naming has me confused. I thought the pair are now called Messier and Messier A. Pickering crater is elsewhere on the lunar surface. I think I remember reading that originally the Messier Pair were Messier and Pickering but somewhere along the route they got renamed and Pickering was used to name some other crater. Must track the info down.

Yes, you are right. I was looking at my 1960's edition of A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets moon maps.
My more recent Turn Left at Orion shows Messier  and Messier A. 
Wonder why it was renamed.

2020-02-11
Playing hide and seek with the clouds this evening. I started to look at the two lonely craters Messier and WH Pickering where the impact debris from Messier washed either side of the older WH Pickering crater.
A band of clouds came over so I went inside for a cuppa, expecting to clear up afterwards. Fell asleep in the chair and woke up an hour later to a lovely clearing sky.
Struck by the strangeness of the Rheita Valley I reached for the sketch pad and started again. So much detail, I was wondering if I had bitten off a bit too much and this took me much longer than expected.
After seeing the Venus crescent and Mercury as a dot in the early evening after sunset, it all turned out quite nice after all.

 

 

I was going to start with the moon. Also thinking of using a zoom ep, bit probably just stay with one subject for a short look.

Relying on the goto  to find and track. 

I've got a projection ep somewhere,.... Evening project to rummage in boxes of bits....

 

yes that's the sort of thing. I was going to set up the phone (in fact Ive got an old phone without sim card I could use), set up the phone on the scope and then make the call..., then switch camera to the 'front'.

 

I was thinking of doing a small live webcast for a small collection of family and friends using my phone and an adapter.
Anybody done this?
Clearly I need to get a (reasonably priced) phone adapter and some wifi-coverage in the back yard.
I was thinking of using Skype or WattsApp to make a private group video call so the extended family could enjoy something of the night sky.

Any suggestions welcome.

That looks a very interesting area. I will have to look that up. Lovely sketches. It was quite cold sketching at the eyepiece yesterday.

 

2020-02-06. A lovely clear night and almost full 11 day moon very high in the sky. I had my best ever view of Schröters valley. 

The rift was clearly illuminated with the surrounding undulations presenting as variations in tone. The area seems to be a trapezoidal shape with the 2 craters on one side (left) and a linear feature on the other (right). 

I used an orange and polarising filter for the first time which helped with the definition of the features.

 

That's s very interesting area to sketch. Thank you.

 

After a mixed weather day, s super clear sky emerged around 9pm and I was able to get a couple of hours on the area around Copernicus. So much detail to see. The 5mm ep made a rare outing of its box and I was able to see the small line of volcanic sink holes between the two craters.

Nice to see Stadius the sunken crater in the middle. In another part of the surface I found Fra Mauro (aka Mickey Mouse).

I tried to capture the lighter areas by pre-shading the paper and then using a soft eraser.

enjoying this. The first episode had me hooked and the second episode did not disappoint.
I did have to trawl the memory banks to recover the difference between Vulcans and Romulans.
The  only weak criticism I have  is the eyebrow department might improve with practice for the close-ups 🙂

 

It had been sunny most of the day and there was a clear evening with the half moon high to the south. I had a spectacularly clear view of the terminator running from the Alpine Valley to Ptolemaeus (with a partially illuminated floor). In the middle was Sinus Medii and I was very pleased to be able to pick out Rima Hyginus with my Bresser 102s. It's not often the 5mm ep comes out, but it was very useful this eve.

Rima Hyginus is a long rille separated by a small crater. There appear to be undulations to the north that were illuminated nicely by the shallow angle of the sun.

The sketch is using 3 grades of pencil and a soft charcoal.

Thanks for looking.

9 hours ago, bish said:

Great sketch. I like to sketch Lunar features but struggle when I'm sat in the cold looking into an eyepiece. 

I have a little dim red clip on reading light that helps to see what I'm doing, and sit on a high stool.

 

Friday 16/Jan – Sat 17 Jan 2020, UK

 

The weather forecast had been changeable all day, but looked promising in spite of the considerable amounts of moisture in the air.

I set my alarm for 10:30 pm and retired early, hoping to get a few hours observing in before the moon-rise just after 1am.

The night was a lot clearer that I expected, so I set up my little Bresser 102s/600 & Exos2 in the back garden and visited a few favourites to check everything out. The Pleiades looked crisp and clear, M42 was a delight with the wings spreading across the field of view. The trapezium was very clear tonight. Surprised with the clarity, I swung over to M1, and there it was and small grey irregular fuzzy patch. Its not often I can see this in my small refractor. A UHC filter helped the dim the background slightly.

My Messier list has several gaps from when I started it January 2019. Sirius was just off due south, shining brightly over the fence and the neighbours houses so I attempted some of the low elevation objects.

I was very pleased to be able to add a umber of these clusters to my list: M41, M93, M46 and M47. The 15mm eyepiece worked well for all these of these. M79 eluded me, I needed a better view and to be set up earlier around 10pm.

Monoceros was now riding high so I started a short tour of this faint constellation that I’ve not really looked at before.
Beta Monoceros was not in the goto dictionary, so I went back to old-school star hopping to find it.  A modest slightly egg shaped star was visible in the 15mm ep, so I popped in the 8mm and then the 5mm. When the atmosphere settled all 3 of the triple star system were resolved, B and C almost appearing to touch. The 5mm didn’t not really add to the experience apart from being able to see diffraction rings (they were round) and slightly blurry stars. The separation of these stars is about 7.4  and 2.8 arc sec. Since the Rayleigh limit of my refactor is approx. 1.35 arc sec, that was really very good and attests to the unusual (and unexpected) clarity of this evenings sky.

NGC 2301 (the bird cluster): well it sort of looked like you might draw a bird in flight with 2 granular patches on my left side.

NGC 2264 (Christmas tree cluster): A nice clear pine tree outline. No sign of any nebulosity. I will have to return with the camera.

M50: a clear open cluster with a group of well resolved stars, more visible with averted vision.

M48: a large cluster easily seen in the 25mm ep with a denser core and an L shaped pattern of brighter stars near the centre.

It was now nearly 1 am and I still had a bit of time before the moon rose, so I swung around to Ursa Major near the zenith and grovelled near the floor to see M81 and M82 in the same view with the 25mm ep. The round and elongated shapes were clearly visible, but no detail.

Seeking a challenge, I edged down to look for M97 (more grovelling near the floor looking up) not expecting to see anything. Surprise, there was a very faint round grey patch with what I call the 3 ‘locating stars’ to the side. A UHC filter and swapping in the 15mm ep (this is becoming my favourite EP) helped darken the sky to discern a faint fuzzy small tennis ball shape. No ‘eyes’ were visible. Again I was surprised how clear the evening had become as the temperature dropped towards zero and remembered how difficult it had been to find this a year ago even with the aid of a piggy back camera.

Trying to make the most of the night, I covered the scope over and retired and dozed for a couple of hours before touring the early morning half (waning) moon terminator and sketching the sun setting over the craters and mountains.

Thank you for reading – clear skies.

Sketched early morning on 18 Jan 2020

The angle of the sun down the terminator made the Appenines light up like a white scar.
So much to see and I don't usually look at the waning moon this early.

Fascinating to see the shadows lengthen, whilst I sketched this,  as the sun was setting over the mountains.

Sketch is reversed L-R due to diagonal. Mixture of graphite pencils and charcoal pencils.