Rashad, Rod and I met at the Peak in front of the FPOA observatory yesterday afternoon (Mar 27th) ready to observe the Moon and Mars. Rashad had his new 12.5" Dobs, Rod had his AP180EDT refractor, and I had my AP 130EDT refractor. The skies were clear everything looked great.
We did get very nice views of the Moon. We were watching the sun rise over Gassendi. We also looked at Hadley rill. I enjoyed looking at the small string of craters between Eratosthenes and Copernicus. A small mount in Mare Imbrium roughly between Euler and Draper was casting an interesting little shadow
We were watching peaks light up in the dark "in back" of Gassendi as the sun advanced. It was fun just looking all along the terminator and out into the more sunny areas of the Moon.
Most of the time was using my AP/Zeiss binoviewer with its barlow and 16 mm Zeiss Abbe Ortho eyepieces giving about 234x. For a little while I switched to 10mm Zeiss Abbe Orthos for about 374x with the 130 mm f/8 APO refractor.
At the lower power the lower part of Hadley rill was easy to see. I was surprised how easy it was to see those little craters that look like a track of foot prints near Copernicus even though the were well into the sunlight. The rough wall around Sinus Iridum was interesting. It was great just to be out looking at the Moon again after weeks of cloudy weekends.
Two Boy Scouts came by the observatory and we let them have a look at the Moon through out telescopes.
The fog started moving into the valley south of the Peak about an hour after sunset. By about 11pm the fog was over our heads. Things were very wet and to my surprise there was frost on my eyepiece case.
Rashad wisely packed up and headed for home. Rod and I stayed a little longer. We packed our equipment and as soon as the last piece of gear was put in the truck the wind changed and the fog blew virtually clear of the valley south of the Peak. Rod and I talked about setting up again to see Mars. We looked at Mars with my Celestron 55mm fluorite. The image was a little fuzzy but you could see a polar cap. I got out unpacked my 130EDT and we looked at Mars for about 15 minutes and the objective lens fogged over. I put the scope away again and we headed home.
With the 130EDT we saw the polar cap on Mars, a little dark detail briefly showed near the polar cap but that was about all. We were using about 140x and 280x. A Tak 7.5mm LE eyepiece alone and with a 2x Celestron barlow. The binoviewer was not used to look at Mars. If the seeing had been better and the dewing less then I would have used it.