Learning to like luna 30/10/17

[domstar]

I'm really starting to get into lunar observing. On a bitter, breezy but clear night I set up on the balcony. I have the virtual moon atlas on my laptop and I'd never looked at the terminator function before. This is brilliant. It lists the best views for the time- in this case 77 percent- in order of how interesting they are. Before I discovered this  I'd just  looked at a few craters and maybe found out their name, but with this function I was able to try more subtle sights.

So this time I saw Dome Milichius- a tiny volcanic dome (I would never have known it was there) and Rimae Hippalus- some faint parallel lines around Hipplus- itself a beautiful but subtle crater. I spent quite some time on the walls of Sirius Iridium, which showed detail and differences on different stretches. I would've noticed Copernicus and its beauties anyway and I lingered on the central mountains a while.

My views were mostly at 90x which I seem to always prefer to my 6mm 150x- exit pupil? not enough aperture for the mag? The seeing was great (not that I'm experienced enough to judge) and when I looked at the moon I just wanted to eat it.

Also, thanks to @Astro Imp I successfully gave M 57 a look for the first time. I can't wait to go back there.

So no need for a dark site, no need for dark adaptation, easy to find, and spectacular. Discovering the moon is a bit like when I found out that my Play Station 2 also played DVDs (that's a few years ago now).

Thanks for reading.

[Astro Imp]

Great report and pleased to be of help.

I have to agree the Virtual Moon Atlas is a great free program. Have you started on the Lunar 100 yet?

[domstar]

33 minutes ago, Astro Imp said:

Have you started on the Lunar 100 yet?

I've done the first one.

[Astro Imp]

2 minutes ago, domstar said:

I've done the first one.

Only 99 to go, they do get a bit harder as you progress  I've been at it for a while and have 17 to go to complete, the difficulty is catching the right phase when it's not clouded out.

Good luck.

[domstar]

58 minutes ago, Astro Imp said:

I've been at it for a while and have 17 to go to complete

Wow. That's impressive. They do seem to get harder pretty quickly.

[billyharris72]

I'd always assumed the Lunar 100 was fairly easy and bascically an introduction for beginners. Several magazines I'd seen made a lot of the difficulty of observing Hadley Rille, and I managed that without too much difficulty.

Decided to try working through it systematically a few days ago and got a bit of a shock. Trying to view the rilles in Pitatus with an 8 inch Dob (other than the one point where it widens out near the crater rim) has quickly disabused me of any notion that aperture is a secondary consideration for lunar or planetary observing.