Not much to see

[The Warthog]

Last night, March 10, I put the Newt out on the front porch, and got the Moon in the scope. I had to catch it through the branches of one of the trees on the boulevard at first, and the seeing was very difficult. I kept seeing whole areas of the surface disappear into fuzz, then reappear. There was some wispy cloud about, but the air was just bad. I had been hoping to pick out some craterlets on the surface of Crisium that Patrick Moore mentions in Survey of the Moon but I could never see the whole surface at once, even when the Moon was clear of the branches, about an hour after I put the scope out. By then I shouldn't have been dealing with tube currents, at -8 the tube got cold pretty fast.

I did spot a few craters of note. Cleomides is a nice, oval (in perspective) walled plain just north of Crisium, and Macrobius, which sounds like a health-food regimen, just to the west, along the terminator, but clear of it is a well-defined eye-catcher. I didn't find a lot more to remark on; Atlas is clear of the terminator just on the northern horn of the crescent, and Watt, who invented the steam engine, about the same position on the southern horn.

I used the time as an opportunity to switch back and forth between eps and see what the views looked like, but the seeing made high magnifications useless. One of the best views I got was using the 24mm Speers-WALER with my brand new Barlow - very crisp indeed, and a good magnification for these conditions. Between the cold and the seeing, I didn't last much longer, and packed it in about 9:00.

[Talitha]

Thanks WH, it's always a pleasure to read your reports...

even when there's 'not much to see'.

[jgs001]

As Carol said WH, still a nice report. And more than I can get to see. Thanks.

[algol]

yeah good report WH, dying to get a glimpse of the moon myself not seen it since i got my scope