On any given night, assuming it is clear, an obsrver can expect to see about seven meteors. These sporadic meteors are a measure of the everyday debris entering our atmosphere. This number is consistent. All around the world, an average observer on a clear night may see seven meteors. I sort of like that feeling. We astro friends are all connected to each other by what we see in the night sky.
Each night when I am out observing, I know my friends on all continents have a chance to see about seven meteors. It brings us together. We all get to see a little speck from the birth of the solar system. It lights up our night, doesn't it?
The moon works that way too. Tonight, I'll bet that there were alot of us all observing Sinus Iridum. With some other shallow sky friends over for dinner and a planned night of scope tinkering and astronomy club newsletter proofreading, we hadn't really planned to observe. A huge storm is hanging off the coast, and it should have already arrived. But there was the moon, so we changed our plans for the evening! Tinkering was quickly completed, and out went the new AP Traveller, a F6 105MM refractor, with a 6mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece which gave us a 100X magnification. It's a beautiful and elegant instrument, and I'm enjoying getting to know it.
We observed the terminator darkening near the shore line of Sinus Iridum, the beautiful bay of rainbows. Some of the ridges within the bay looked like sharp faultlines. Dorsa Heim, the mare ridge separating the bay of rainbows from Mare Imbrium was quite exquisite, with crater Caroline Herschel between the two sections of the ridge. Plato was pretty too. Below it, white dots of the Montes Teneriffe were striking, looking like rectangular jagged and tumbling icebergs. Kepler was still in shadow, but Encke, a hexagonal rimmed crater was showing those angles nicely. The shape was striking! Just the rim was illuminated.
We looked at some other "white dot mountains" on the terminator. We loooked at weird and wonderful features. We ran in to consult the Rukl pages in better light at each move up and down the terminator.
It was windy and cold and we weren't prepared for being outside for very long. We came in and had some dessert and coffee and talked about other projects for other nights. That's the nice thing about the moon. There's always some nice features to look at, and talk about afterwards. Sort of like those sporadic meteors we usually see most nights. It's just the same old sky after all. I'll bet you are enjoying it just as much as I am!