Mare Orientale

[Talitha]

There was favorable libration for Mare Orientale this morning, and for a change, it happened when Luna was pretty high in altitude. The libration in longitude has usually seemed to be best during moonrise for me, but this time it occurred after transit (and got better and better for a few hours, too). The Sun was already up for the entire session but a light red filter (23A) helped cut through the blue and increased the lunar contrast a lot.

The seeing was pretty good at first because the Earth hadn't warmed up enough to start showing too much turbulence, but as the Sun got higher and higher (and the libration got better and better) the seeing got progressively worse. Still very do-able though, because i was using the 90mm ETX and couldn't kick up to my normal (8"SCT) cruising speed of 222x.

I could definitely see all the way across the mare. The western wall of Montes Rook was a light band between the mare and the sky, and the mare appeared darker towards its southern end. The eastern and northern areas of the mare were lighter.. had almost a blended smoky look to them.

Lacus Veris ran N/S along the eastern border of the mare and was a blackish grey line. During previous sessions, it's always been more towards the limb and therefore appeared incomplete. But this morning i could see it in its entirety. Cool.

I've always seen Lacus Autumni in its entirety but it looked even better this morning because it was pushed in from the limb more than ever before.

On the limb near Lacus Autumni were two distinct bulges.. the northernmost was the sideways view of the upper curve of Montes Cordillera, and the one below it was the sideways view of the upper curve of Montes Rook. On the limb just south of the mare, there was one large bulge which i'm pretty sure was an oblique view of the combined range edges, but i couldn't separate them visually, so the bulge was left unlabelled on the sketch.

Great session, and a wonderful start to the day.

[Doc]

Great report Carol.

I've just traced all your steps on VMA and what a fanntastic detailed report you have given. Did you know the Montes Cordillera and Montes Rook are 18200 feet high, pretty impressive I bet if you were standing at the base of them.

[Talitha]

I'm a flatlander, Mick.. Silbury Hill in Wiltshire impressed me. Thanks for reading.

Seriously though, they're magnificently high ranges and i truly wasn't aware of the height till you posted, thanks for that info. Wow, can you imagine an impact powerful enough to create a double ringed basin like MO? Would have been neat to watch, but from someplace safe.. like the Kuiper Belt, lol.

Edit:

Finally got around to downloading the handful of pics from this morning (single shots, ep projection, Nikon CP 4300). Not the best by any means, but i'm an observer, not an imager.

Anyway, take a look.. you can see the single bulge below the mare which is in my sketch. That's the one i thought was a combination of both ranges, but look below it. There's another, very low one i couldn't see this morning, so i'm guessing the larger one in my sketch is Montes Rook, and this lower one to its south is Montes Cordillera.