First Real Lunar Peek

[Abernus]

Hi all,

Well as some of you may be aware my scope has been out of collimation for a while now and I just got on with it as is.... Now it's aligned I had a quick peek at the moon tonight and WOW!!!!!!

The images were so sharp in my 6" reflector, Due to the time I got out I only had about 20 mins of observing but here is a list of what I managed to view.

Cleomedes, Burkhardt, Geminus and Messala

These were very crisp, very nice ridge formations with deep shadows falling round the edge of the creator. So much detail in the creator walls

Atlas and Hercules

Hercules was a little hard to see as it was on the edge of the shadow. Atlas was a nice sight, very interesting to look at the central peak in the middle of the creator.

There was other items but at the moment I don't know what they were called. I might invest in a moon atlas. The object names here were obtained from TLAO

All in all a very pleasant viewing experience and made all the better by a properly aligned scope.

Thanks for reading.

[kris h]

Not seen the moon for a while now because of the weather and other stuff Nice one getting your scope aligned and viewing the moon and the targets you got to see. a moon atlas is something i need to get too

[Talitha]

The Moon's always fantastic, isn't it?

There's an excellent free lunar program you might be interested in called the Virtual Moon Atlas, or VMA for short. Here's the download page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Older Versions section... either of those will be sufficient for your needs. If you want the libration zones (recommended) then get the 'Expert' version. That's the one i've been using forever, and it's more than adequate for this moonatic's needs.

If you'd like a good, detailed (but not crowded) map to use scopeside, try the Field Map of the Moon from Sky and Telescope. I'm not too sure where you'd get one in the UK, but it's well worth the small cost.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I got my 1st ever REAL view of the moon a few weeks ago using my 130P scope and a 6mm EP (plus a 2X barlow). Crater walls were visible. Shadows stretching out across the crater floors. Mountain peaks within a couple of craters were also visible.

It blew my mind.