Aristarchus

[Hypernova]

I only noticed this extremely bright and conspicuous crater whilst taking a quick peek with the tripod-mounted binoculars earlier this evening. I confess to not being a massive fan of lunar observing so I never have noticed this feature up until now; the moon was out and the sky was mostly clear with a few drifting patches of cloud so it was the obvious target for tonight.

It stood out like a sore thumb in the binoculars as a very bright spot towards the NE limb of the moon and I was confounded as to what I thought it might be, not being familiar with the moon I had no idea, it could've been an impact or TLD for all I know

Even though I intended the session to be short I brought the dob out onto the front garden to get a closer look. It was only with high mag study of the area with a 6mm SPL that it's nature as a crater became apparent, and even then it was hard to make out any detail as the brightness compared to surrounding surface was so high, a total white-out. I had to make a search of the net to find out the name of the crater and why it's brightness was so high, it turns out that it is because of it's relatively young age of "only" 450 million years!

After looking at this I might consider taking up a spot of lunar observing to get better acquainted with our nearest neighbour. I will state though that I prefer to the wide, low magnification view provided by the binoculars to the comparatively close-up view through the dob, does anyone else find this so?

[JimStan]

It depends. If there are clouds racing across the moon, and it is ducking in and out, I find the view fastinating with a good pair of binoculars.

But if the sky is clear and nothing is in front of it, I prefer to view it with an eyepiece that provides just a bit under a half a degree of true FOV. That provides enough magnification and contrast to allow me to see just about all the major features, but is not so much as to lose the "content" of where these objects are with respect to the area around them.

My favorite moon eyepiece is a ~90 degree real FOV, 12mm Nagler. Close to 200X magnification and a view that you have to move your eye around in to take it all in !

Jim S.