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Last Saturday the PAS held a star party at Foothills park in Palo Alto, Calif. It was a very nice night. The seeing would come and go but at times it was quite good. Early in the evening the crater Aristarchus was just in the sunlight, Herodotus was partly lit. You could just see the beginning of the rille Schroter. The high wall of Aristarchus was casting a shadow half way across the crater floor.
By midnight virtually all of Schroter's Valley was in the sunlight. The hill (volcano) next to Aristarchus where Schroter's Valley starts was casting a long shadow giving the feeling that Schroter's Valley was running down and away from the hill. Schroter's Valley is easy to see even in a small telescope. It looks like a crooked ditch formed roughly in the shape of a big "U".
I didn't think to look for the other rilles in the area but it was fun showing Schroter's Valley and other parts of the Moon to the park's visitors.
| Date | July 24, 1999 |
|---|---|
| Location | Foothills park, Palo Alto, CA |
| Instruments | AP 130mm f/8 EDT 92mm f/4.9 EDF |
| Oculars | Takahashi 7.5mm 5mm LE 7mm Nagler |
| Barlows: | Celestron silver top 2x and TV 2.5x Powermate (the Powermate seemed not give as clean an image) Most of the time I was using less than 200x. |
William B. Phelps had his excellent AP 180EDT APO at the star party and took an image of the Aristarchus area you can see at the following address. He used an Olympus digital camera (see stats below). http://home.pacbell.net/wbp/lunar/990724-233430e.jpg
Oly C2000z, coupled to an Orion 35mm eyepiece. f2.8 at 1/25, ISO 100. Image has been converted to greyscale, cropped, and sharpened a bit...
