Mare Orientale?

by Bill Arnett

Dave and Akkana and I got together for Orientale night this evening. It was a mixed night with the views disappointing at first. It got a little better about 9pm and we observed for a while but then the clouds closed in about 10:30 and we gave up and argued about planetarium programs. Dave and Akkana went home shortly there after and I read mail for a while....

At 11:13 PM -0700 7/27/99, Jane Houston wrote:

How's the view right now, fellow shallow sky enthusiasts? ...

Excellent! .....

I peeked my head out and the Moon was clear again. On the off chance that the seeing was OK too, I pointed the Pronto at it at 100x and Wow! the ripples were barely noticeable. So off came the 12" LX200's cover and on with the binoviewer, I even put in the 15mm Panoptics, a rare treat. The seeing was great even at 250x, the best I've seen in many weeks. You guys gave up too soon!

With lots of magnification, nice wide fields, tracking and a steady mount it was a lot easier to get down to business: identifying features on the Moon's western limb. Lacus Autumni was obvious as was Lacus Veris. From there I figured out some of the craters along the two ring mountains (Schluter, Schluter A, Eichstadt, Krasnov, Wright, Shaler, Pettit, Nicholson). Having thus gotten my bearings, I nailed Kopff. And thus Mare Orientale itself clearly visible south and even a little west of Kopff. (Maunder was beyond the terminator.) Akkana's Big Weird Mountain is not labeled on Rukl. But I'm pretty sure it is just east of Schluter B and southeast of Schluter S, making a nearly equilateral triangle with them. It was pretty clearly the second ridge west from Schluter A and north and west of the northern part of Lacus Veris. It's amazing what you can see when things are right! This was my first confirmed sighting of Orientale itself. :-)

(Stupid Lunar Fact of the Day: Laci Autumni, Veris and Aestatis (Lakes Autumn, Spring and Summer) are all together near Grimaldi but Lacus Hiemalis (Winter Lake) is over by Serenitatis. Go figure :-)