Interesting night, since we did some "real" observing at a public star party and even let the visitors play.

It all got started when a friend set up next to me started trading views of the moon via "LipNet," and we started spotting some interesting things.

Of course, since this was "Copernicus Night," that was the major area of concentration. But before we get to that, a couple of other notes:

Rimae Hippalus, Agatharchides and Hippalus were all spectacular last night, shown in ideal light and pretty good seeing (we were able to split the "double" in Plato very cleanly at about 225x).

But particularly neat was Rimae Ramsden, a crosshatched area in Palus Epidemarius. This was right on the terminator, and very easy and fat. Remarkable detail that had the visitors oohing and ahhing that they could see such fine features so easily.

Also, this was the night where Sinus Iridium hangs off into space, with that jet black sky around it and the tops of the peaks lit like a little arc of stars...

Okay, back to "science": while perusing the rich field around Copernicus, appreciating the little craterlet lines and fine rille structures shot throughout, we started noticing the domes as showing particularly well... especially the group of five near Hortensius, one of which is a double dome with only one peak "cratered." We were easily able to spot the central craters in all of them (save the one that has none), so we went shopping -- and found another group showing well almost directly to the north.

In the process, we also noticed a few wrinkle ridges that seem to end in small craters, almost like a negative version of Rima Birt or Schroter's Valley. This may be coincidental, or it might be a feature of the Copernican topology. But another odd thing was these *enormous* domes in the area. One was a little north and west of Milchius, and shows well on the charts. The other, equally well defined, does not show on my charts: it was west and slightly north of Reinhold. This is interesting in that they are so low and usually (I presume) ill defined as to be a rare event; I wonder if anyone knows if the second large dome (probably about 25x35 miles) is charted anywhere? It was definitely pear shaped, with the narrow end to the south southwest.

Again, even visitors could pick this out with some guidance, and they seemed to feel as if they were participating in "research" or something; kind of neat to see how excited they would get.

The last weird feature of the night was a squarish island north of Copernicus, across the mountains, and directly west toward the terminator. It appears separated from the rest of the range, and distinctly square -- raised much like a dome, but peppered with all manner of blocks and marks as if it were somehow piled there as a rubbish heap. Odd, indeed.