Shortly after moonrise last night we were preparing to shut down the 30 inch telescope at Fremont Peak Observatory in Northern California after a two night stay when two campers walked over and requested some views through the telescope. Sagittarius well placed, and we swung the big scope over to scan the genter of our galaxy. A pleasant half hour was spent visiting the lovely Milky Way wonders through a UHC filter. By then it was after 2:30 AM and the moon was getting high enough for viewing thru the big scope, a real treat! At higher power, about 250X - I felt like I was walking on the moon. I didn't not notice the ring feature described by others as I was using too high a power and couldn't see large areas of the moon in the same field of view. But what I did see was awesome! Tycho's rays were so striking! Sinus Iridum was, too! Clavius was dark and forboding, craterlets on the dark floor brightly constrasted. I didn't have my Rukl with me as we were doing FF's and IOs (small fuzzy interacting objects) all weekend, mostly.
But the favorable libration gave us a good view of Mare Orientale. The seeing was not so great for the faint fuzzies but great for mooning. Not a wobble in view!
My "just a little longer" looks turned into a half-hour moon walk. We both enjoyed the third quarter moon walk among the alps and mountains, bright spots and seas before closing up the telesocpe. Arriving home near dawn we agreed it was worth staying up late to view the moon after a pleasant otherwise dark sky weekend.