The Moon, Saturn, and a whole box of eyepieces.

[The Warthog]

As it got dark tonight, I was very tired, having spent a good part of the afternoon putting stuff into my new front shed, but as darkness fell, I moved the things from the back shed that were blocking my access to my tripod and set up my scope.

It was the Newt I set up, as the tripod for the refractor is in pieces, awaiting a rebuild. I started with the 24mm ep, about 32x, and just scanned the terminator quickly.

The big star of this part of the lunation is Maurolycus, a lovely, deep crater with a nice flat floor and a central peak, about a quarter of the way from the south to the centre. Just to the north of Maurolycus is the intricate structure of Gemma Frisius (Gemma the Frisian, a German or Danish astronomer) and Goodacre (an English astronomer.) Together they have a lot of little craters with interesting names like Gemma Frisius P and Goodacre K. This is all in the very rugged southern portion of the Moon with huge numbers of craters, but I didn't stay long there as I was on a mission.

I wanted to trace the Dorsa (wrinkle ridges) in Mare Serenitatis. I had put my 4.3mm W70 in, for about 175x, and although I have seen the Dorsa in previous trips to Serenitatis, tonight it looked as smooth as the bottoms of my granmother's heirloom china bowls. I know from previous viewing that crater Bessel, a nice dimple in the surface of Serenitatis, has a ray passing through it north-south, from Menelaus, but the ray wasn't apparent tonight, and neither was Dorsa Smirnov and Dorsa Lister, the serpentine ridges that curl up the east side of Serenitatis. The best I could do was to make out a faint image of Dorsa Buckland on the west side of the Mare. Although Bessel appeared as clear as ever, the surface of the Sea of Serenity looked, well, Serene.

Go a little north of Serenitatis, and you get Aristoteles and Eudoxus, Aristoteles being the larger of the pair. Eudoxus, whose name means "Good doctrine" came up with the 365 ¼ day year in the 4th century BC, but it took up until about the 15th century AD to invent the leap year.

I switched eps back and forth quite a bit, eventually deciding that the best combo on tonight's moon was my 7.5mm SWA with the 2x APO Barlow, giving 200x, and nice detail, although something, possibly the atmosphere, was preventing getting the absolute best performance out of my kit tonight.

I moved over to Saturn for a while. Got a nice sharp image at 200x, showing the rings as a line through the planet. Put in my 4.8mm Nagler, and was able to catch a hint of banding on the planet. Titan was showing up nicely just to the west of the planet.

All in all, a good session.

[Doc]

A very descriptive report WH. And I really enjoyed reading it.

[Talitha]

:)Thanks WH, well-written and very interesting.. I really like the extra bits of info you include, you're a good teacher.

[neptuneblue]

Very complete report. Keep up the great work.