Moonrise over Fremont
By David North

>>"Vallis North" was also evident.<<

Personally, I like to call that the "Vermiform Valley" (which I think means "The Valley That Looks Like A Worm).

>>I hope Dave was out observing, too<<

Blearily, I admit to it. I got home a little after 11 and decided to set up the FS. At first, it was pretty bad, but after about 15 minutes it was so good I pumped it up to 260x (my max eyepiece load right now). I suspect it would have supported a bit more, but that was pretty good.

Noted the same rimae as you [Bill] in the "Gang Of Four." I particularly noted a lot of radial ridges running out of Petavius that I don't remember seeing before, and also the secondary craters from Langrenus were easy pickings.

>>The transparency was Horrible with high clouds and a nearly full Moon. Even easy open clusters would have been ugly. But the Moon burns thru stuff like this easily. In fact, it seems that these conditions often lead to pretty good seeing sometimes.<<

I've noticed that before, which was a good part of the reason I thought I'd set up. It does ruin some of the aesthetic that you can't get a good "black" (contrast is lowered a bit) but when you "zoom in" on a particular area it doesn't seem to matter so much.

Also, when the seeing is good just about any little area is amazing -- all those little tiny features become so clear.

I spent a some time in western Crisium fooling around the area of O'Neil's Bridge (I'm sure I spelled that wrong somehow) and have to agree it's an interesting area.

It's also fun to see a bunch of detail in Endymion, which is usually a sort of Plato On The Limb without much in the way of features.

A last note: very high mag extends the terminator for me; brighter areas that might be irritating are very tolerable over 250x, and show detail as well.