by Akkana Peck
We were clouded out last night. Sounds like I missed a nice view! I don't think I've ever noticed the Arago domes with sunset light; I'll have to try for them next time. Were you able to see the central peaks at all?
We had clearer skies night before last (Monday night) and I got a lovely view of sunset over the Cauchy Hyperbolas. The terminator was exactly over the crater Cauchy, so half of the rille and half of the wall were showing, and both were fairly prominent. I'd never seen them in that light before.
Sunday night was interesting, too: viewing at about 0530 UT, I was just a bit too late for the O'Neal's bridge area on the west end of Mare Crisium (Rukl 26), where Promentories Olivium and Lavinium stretch their fingers toward each other but never quite touch. I saw no hint of the "bridge" effect that O'Neal saw. The promentories themselves were only half lit, losing the light, but one peak beyond them in Crisium still stood up into the light: part of the connecting bridge shown in Rukl between the ghost crater Yerkes and small Yerkes E. There were also some nice peaks showing out of the darkness along the northwest edge of Crisium, the unnamed isolated hill that occupies the center of the triangle defined by Cleomedes, Tisserand, and Cleomedes F. It must be peakier than shown in Rukl: I saw five or six separate dots of light there.
Arthur and Nancy Silacci wrote:
South into Tranquilitatis [35] (where craters seem to be more spellable) past pristine Al-Bakri...
I like Al-Bakri and the area of Promentorium Archerusia nearby: there's a little hill near the crater, which shows up just below and to the left of it on Rukl35, that looks at sunrise like a child's drawing of a seagull. I've never looked for it at sunset, though; now I'm curious what it looks like.