Walther Sunset Ray / 3rd quarter moon

[stevend]

While many will have been looking for Geminids, and I saw quite a few, my highlight of last night's viewing was the 3rd quarter moon.

Is the 3rd quarter moon better viewing than the 1st quarter moon ? Maybe, because I rarely view it, and despite some patchy cloud I finally got to see the spectacular Walther Sunset Ray.

The Walther Sunset Ray is not often visible in the UK, and I am not helped by my poor view of the Eastern horizon but tonight I bagged it. It looked magnificent; a light ray shining through a gap creating a dark triangle in the Walther crater and in the middle of the shadow the peak (due to its height) is left lit.

Mons Pico created a lovely shadow as it does at 1st quarter phase, and Montes Alpes and Appenninus framed Mare Imbrium so well but I think that the 3rd quarter shows them off better. Elsewhere there were some wonderful dark shadows across many craters especially near Walther leaving me to consider that the 3rd quarter moon is better viewing than the 1st quarter.

The straight wall is no longer in shade but otherwise it seemed that the sun setting was delivering longer and deeper shadows than the sun rising ? It could be the fact that I rarely view the 3rd quarter but I would be interested to hear other views on this. At worse it is just great to get a different perspective of some features.

I finished my session at 0400, thank goodness today is sunday.

[stevend]

My goodness I must have tired when I wrote the above post. What I should have written was Walther had a dark center containing a light (ie the ray) triangle, with the peak lit. Sorry for any confusion.

Note to anyone else who wants to view it; unlike some lunar effects this ray does not last that long - it might even be less than one hour. I think the next chance to view it in the UK is Jan 2nd 2016.