Pythagoras At The Right Angle (!)

[cloudsweeper]

Or....crater central peak emerging from blackness casts tiny shadow on terraced, silvery far wall.

5.30pm - ED80 on GoTo - quite a bit of cloud, but the Moon (three days from full, south of east) punched through it regularly.  Aligned on the Moon.

Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows) > Foucault > Harpalus > low-walled Babbage (with the prominent Babbage A in its floor) > Pythagoras, abutting Babbage to the north, and right on the terminator.  Started at x16/4.25deg, soon went to x80, x120.  The north-west wall of Pythagoras was a silver arc in the darkness, with traces of terracing.  The massive central peaks showed up as a tiny white dot in the black floor.

Later, the clouds had largely dispersed, so I could concentrate more on this interesting apparition.  The smaller craterlet Babbage C was clear west of A, and an even smaller one (Babbage E, I think) was seen near the western rim, using x192.  At this mag, the silver dot in the blackness of Pythagoras now looked like a tiny triangle, and it looked very much as if that was casting a shadow on the silvery terraced arc, taking a small black nick out of it - a very pleasing effect indeed!

With the Moon, the more you look, the more you see!

Doug.

Edited December 10, 2019 by cloudsweeper

[dannybgoode]

Pythagoras was indeed quite a sight tonight. A really interesting area in general. Not had a proper lunar session until tonight and saw so much. Agree, the more you dig into the detail the more you get lost.