Lunar insight in Monterey

by Jamie Dillon

Saturday night, Liam's Cub den had a campout in Veteran's Park, a big swatch of woods right in the middle of the Monterey peninsula. It's a Monterey pine preserve, has lots of open trails. Could hear the sea lions down at the Coast Guard pier, quite a ways off, along with bugle calls from Defense Language Institute. The campout, I'm glad to report, was a good deal more fun than I'd expected.

After all were sacked out, well before 9, I set up my new sling chair and played with the binocs for a good long stretch. This was with my beloved old Swift 7x50's.

Lots of sky glow from the surrounding towns. Eta Cas was just above the naked eye limit. M34 took averted vision and jiggling the binocs to see the cluster emerge (techniques that'll hold me in good stead under more serious skies). M15 and the Double Cluster were there as well. M31 just jumped out, God that thing is huge.

Spent the big bulk of the time gazing at the Moon. Here I crossed over a line I'd been anticipating but hadn't gotten to before that night, where Luna went beyond being the familiar sight up there, and I started to see enough of it to perceive that rocky small planet right there in close orbit.

This was written first for Dave North and Akkana Peck, after reading many pages from them and absorbing hopefully some of their insight. Spent long moments looking at Aristarchus and Tycho, soaking in the ancient landscape. Went and read about Aristarchus and its mysterious neighbor bright band. This is an observer who is just beginning to be at all lunar-literate.

Before Saturday night, at least there was one aspect of the night sky that wasn't yet addictive. No more.

On to next Saturday!