Tonight as we were leaving the Lucky Penny all-night diner after a lecture at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco California, Mojo and I looked up. The 7 day old moon was shining brilliantly. Yes! Tonight we'd finally get to try out our new telescope on the moon!
We've been punished severely over the past month for our purchase. The astro-weather gods must have been very angry that we were able to latch on to a 100mm F6 Astro-Physics Traveller without the usual and obligatory wait. Once we decided on and purchased an equatorial mount for it - a Vixen GP, by the way, we were punished all over again. This past new moon weekend was either cloudy or rainy no matter where we went.
So tonight we set up the new scope on the back deck. For comparison, I also set up Red Dwarf, my 6 inch F5 Pierre Schwaar "Super Companion" reflector, using the 6 and 12mm Lanthanums, and a 15mm Orion Ultrascopic eyepiece for a range of magnification of 50 to 125X.
We were using these same two Vixen Lanthanum eyepieces, which in concert with a Televue 1.8X barlow gave us a range of magnification from 50 to 180X. Out came Rukl, page 5 to be exact. I studied Aristoteles and Mitchell - named for woman astronomer and comet discoverer Maria Mitchell at 180X. The terraced wall opposite crater Mitchell was brilliantly lit, showing a huge shadow backing into the terminator. I thought I saw what appeared to be a ray of light entering the crater from the shadowed wall on the other side of Aristoteles. The chain of craterlets to the north, from Galle, through subtle Rima Sheepshanks was reminiscent of the head of Leo, the backwards question mark shaped asterism not far away toward the south tonight. The little craterlets were crisp in their detail. Mare Frigoris itself was undulating with snakey shapes connecting crater to crater, much like the Hawaiian Island chain. This little Traveller was cooking!
A little to the south (and a few Rukls away on page 13) was my next and last shallow sky target for the night. Eudoxus, with its center filled with darkness was beautiful!
These two craters were good first targets for the equatorial mounted Traveller. I am used to my alt-az dobs, which require just a nudge nudge here or a nudge nudge there for movement. I was able to easily move north and south with the declination slow motion control on the GP mount. East and west were managed with the RA controller, though I think we'll need to tweak things for smoother movement. These two craters located near the North Pole of the moon, and were a perfect target for first (almost) light. the other firsts don't count. One was accomplished the day we got the 'scope, when it was mounted on a camera tripod, and the other was a cloudy moonless campout with 70 hormone activated 9th graders a few days ago.
I'll have to get a good observing chair before attempting to sketch the moon through the Traveller. My hands were full of knobs and controllers tonight. But I suspect that it'll be alot of fun to sit and have the telescope do all the work, allowing me to record my observations on a sketchpad. The views from the reflector, were beautiful too. Double stars were great in both scopes.
It was great to see the moon again, and wonderful to view it though a new telescope.