OK I have been seduced by Lunar light

[Bigwings]

I spend most of my time with The Nexstar SE8 SCT with DSO's and planets ( not quite true most of the time its raining) but last night the sky was so washed out with the moon I decided to see what I could do , encouraged by some good views of GASSENDI the previous night when it was near the terminator. Then I could see the central peaks and the inner walls with my Antares W70 15mm. Last night the moon was a lot brighter so I experimented with EP's and filters.

I tried my SW 40mm which gave a good wide angled moon and came down to concentrate on GASSENDI with 20 15 & 4.3mm.

The 4.3 was rubbish because of air currents and seeing.

I was surprised that the best EP BY FAR was my 8-24mm Seben Zoom at about 12mm. That with a 30% Hirsch moon filter.

The advantage of the zoom was that you were spared the continued changing of the filter to the next EP. At full 28mm I added a 15% Moon filter to the 30% and was pleased to reduce the glare so I could see much more detail.

I just might be converted to Lunar observation having been put off by an overexposed eyeball in the past.

For me the solution is my Zoom and my 2 filters.

Clear Skies

Mike