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Full Moon in pyjamas


Nyctimene

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When I woke up unplanned at 2 a.m., the full moon looked through some fast travelling clouds, indicating that the strong gusty wind, paired with low temperatures of about -7° C, still not had calmed down. Under these conditions, I was too lazy to put out any gear; so I grabbed the "Blue Penguin", a Skywatcher Infinity 76, (small, but decent 76/300 dobsonian Newton, designed for children), and put it on the sideboard under the south facing kitchen window. The kitchen is well warmed by an underfloor heating, so I simply stayed with pyjamas and slippers. Additional warming up was provided by stroking our cat Tabby, a trusty nightly companion. Through the double-glazed window (very good build quality), I got nice, crisp and almost undistorted views at mag 30x. I started with the Grimaldi basin at the moon's western limb; at it's SE rim, a bright area was very obvious. The walled plain Riccioli could be made out easily to the NW. Lohrmann A, a small (12 km) crater appeared as a bright tiny patch without any details (IIRC, Lohrmann A was/is, for the reason of it's brightness, part of an observing schedule (list of 30 craters), the "Berlin System", used for the evaluation of total lunar eclipses). Grimaldi C, 10 km diam. was less bright. To the SW, the triangle of craters Crüger, Rocca and Sirsalis/A followed. W of Kepler, the albedo phenomenon Reiner Gamma stood out clearly. The three large lunar ray systems of Tycho, Kopernikus and Kepler were very distinct, as always with full moon. I meandered across the lunar disc for some more minutes and spotted the 20 km crater Pytheas N of Kopernikus, Plato, the Apennines and Alpes regions. After 40 minutes, the moon slowly hid behind the roof top, and I returned to bed, being pleased by a satisfying winter session, and still warm feet!

Thanks for reading

Stephan

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Nice report, just shows that any opportunity, no matter how unlikely, is worth seizing because you just never know. I'm really surprised though that "Full moon in pyjamas" hasn't attracted some amusing comment. I do wish I could draw cartoons. Moon, telescope, enthusiastic astronomer, pyjamas, weak elastic or poorly tied waist band etc.

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5 hours ago, Alfian said:

Nice report, just shows that any opportunity, no matter how unlikely, is worth seizing because you just never know. I'm really surprised though that "Full moon in pyjamas" hasn't attracted some amusing comment. I do wish I could draw cartoons. Moon, telescope, enthusiastic astronomer, pyjamas, weak elastic or poorly tied waist band etc.

No need to draw it, that is exactly what I expected to read about, heated observing location, whatever next! ?

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On 3/3/2018 at 16:44, Alfian said:

Nice report, just shows that any opportunity, no matter how unlikely, is worth seizing because you just never know. I'm really surprised though that "Full moon in pyjamas" hasn't attracted some amusing comment. I do wish I could draw cartoons. Moon, telescope, enthusiastic astronomer, pyjamas, weak elastic or poorly tied waist band etc.

I  also wish  that I could draw cartoons because I can see Sir PM in this one, bless him, often described as ' a badly made bed ' in appearance.

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