On the evening of July 4, 1998, several diehard observers gathered at Fremont Peak State Park, near San Juan Bautista, California, for a look at the Moon. The position of the terminator was well-placed for viewing a "challenge" lunar object, Rima Brayley, which lies at about 21 N, 37 W, in selenographic coordinates. This narrow rille is plotted on the large version of Rukl's _Atlas_of_the_Moon_, the one published by Kalmbach, but not on the smaller Rukl atlas from Hamlyn.

Several more experienced and better-equipped lunar observers than I were present, and I will let them report on the details seen with other telescopes, but persons interested in the performance of my Meade 127 ED 5-inch doublet might like to know that in brief intervals of excellent seeing, I could distinguish the part of the rille immediately due north of Brayley, at 285x (4 mm Vixen Lanthanum LV eyepiece). The rille appeared as a very fine dark line. The sunrise terminator was 30 or 40 Km west of Brayley at the time of the observation. I confirmed this view in a nearby Astro-Physics 180, which showed the rille somewhat more often. After allowing for the difference in aperture, the Meade performed respectably when judged by the standard of the big Christen triplet.

The wrinkle ridge system that is tangent to Brayley on the (selenographic) SW side, that trends SE/NW, was prominent, as was much other detail in the area.

I also looked for a rille plotted but not named by Rukl, that lies at about 21 N, 35 W. I could not see it, although a white albedo feature near that location was prominent. The feature lies a few Km SE of an unnamed peak at about 21.3 N, 35.5 W, and as near as Rukl's atlas allows me to judge, is superimposed on the unnamed rille at that location.

Elsewhere on the Moon, Rima Plato was prominent, Sinus Iridum was magnificent, and it was fascinating to watch changes in the appearance of the rough, textured floor of Gassendi, as the sunrise terminator withdrew across it.

I again succeeded in getting a reasonable split of Antares with the Meade, at 285x. Seeing was about the same as on the previous time when I reported a lot of lateral chromatic dispersion of the image of Antares, of the sort you might associate with atmospheric refraction or tube currents, and the star was at a similar elevation. This time there was no such dispersion in evidence, and that makes only one time in three that I have seen it, so I suspect that the phenomenon had more to do with meteorological conditions outside the tube or within it than with some intrinsic property of the optics. ("Within it" means "tube currents" in this context.)

The Meade also gave a fine split of gamma Virginis at 285x -- the star is no challenge for 5 inches of aperture at this epoch. And I used lower magnifications to give a couple of passers-by a view of some Messier open and globular clusters, which were about the best deep-sky objects I could find in the moonlit sky.

It was fun teasing the serious Loonies about their avocation. "How many objects have you logged on the Moon?" one asked. "Just one -- the Moon," I answered, referring to the fact that my card index of things I have looked at has no entries for individual craters and the like. "Why," he continued, "I have seen thousands of things on the Moon." To which I replied, "I don't know why you bother looking at it -- it's not even a planet." We left it that if I found craters in any other part of the sky, I would let him know real soon.