by Bill Arnett
After more a much too long hiatus I got a peek at the Moon again tonight (Dec 16 0830 UT) Some of the usual suspects were lined up but what struck my eye was Maurolycus (Rukl 66). The evening shadows in two places seemed discontinuous as if formed by a gigantic flag on a pole on top of the mountains. I really did a double-take. I moved my scope to eliminate the possibility that I was seeing crud on my optics. The weirdness remained. Skeptical of the reality of a gigantic flag, I decided to check the topography in Rukl. He shows a couple of inconspicuous mountains near where I saw my funny shadows. What I saw in one case was the normal shadow from the rim mountains coming up to the base of a mountain which then cast its own shadow a little farther on. In the other case it was a nearly invisible mountain (which just touches the bottom of the "y" of "Maurolycus" on Rukl's chart and is much more prominent there than what I saw in my eyepiece) just east of what seems to be the large central peak (near Rukl's "o"). But the inconspicuous mountain is 3x higher than the obvious one! Very peculiar. I suppose it is the true central peak but it sure doesn't look that way.