Schiller; Second Session Today

[Roy Challen]

After an enjoyable solar session this morning, I felt  an evening session observing the moon was needed (for universal feng shui -  term borrowed from someone on here). The seeing was mainly good, although there was a prolonged session of bad seeing halfway through.

I chose the Crater Schiller as my main target for the evening. It is a distinctive shape, being very elongated. It actually looks like two craters that impacted at very low angles, and managed to overlap each other. Perhaps it was one object that broke up close to the surface, creating two impact craters.

I made a quick sketch, noting the small craters around the rim, and the two small mountain ranges at one end within the main crater.

I then looked at the crater Plato. I attempted to count the craterlets within. At first, I could only resolve the central craterlet, but gradually I thought I could make out another roughly halfway to the rim and not quite directly south. Checking a lunar atlas later, I found that this was a genuine observation, so I’m happy with two craters resolved. I also had hints of rougher terrain to the north of the central craterlet, which are actually two craterlets close together. I couldn’t be sure of these though, and only found their true nature by checking the atlas.

Lastly, I viewed the Alpine valley. It was fully illuminated, and very low contrast. It is best viewed with lower illumination so I’ll have to revisit later.

I was using the zoom and barlow combination at between x180 and x265.

Schiller, just right of centre. The view was much better than shown here. Nice to get two scopes out for two sessions in one day. This is turning out to be a good year for astro (for me at least!).

Edited April 24, 2021 by Roy Challen