The bunny hop and other observing tails 5/2/01

by Jane Houston Jones


I went out to a spot 10 miles from home last night in hopes of seeing Comet Linear A2 one last time. Azalea Hill is on the south-west flank of Mount Tamalpais and the 1200 foot hill blocks the San Francisco lights to the south-east. The comet was to be found near the tail of the bunny constellation, Lepus. My only challenge would be to see the bunny itself, Lepus being pretty low on the west this time of year from my latitude, 37.58 north.

I arrived at the empty parking lot at dusk. While waiting for the sky to darken, I observed Jupiter and for probably one of the last times for a while, Saturn and M-42. The moon requires no wait for astronomical twilight to end, however, and soon I was pointing my 6 inch f/5 Pierre Schwaar Super Companion reflector upwards. It was windy here in the California Bay Area yesterday. Gusts blew down power poles, roofs took flight, and mountainous roads were covered with tree limbs. I set up on the lee side of my big green pig (aka new used 1998 Dodge Caravan) to help protect scope and observer from the wind. Surprisingly, the moon views were crisp and steady in spite of the wind. I started with a 6 mm eyepiece (Orion Lanthanums for the night) for a 125x view. That looked so good that I slipped in the 3.8mm for a 197x look. The number of craterlets in Clavius were amazing -- I counted 30 or more. Then I upped the power to 342x and the images still looked amazing!

I started my lunar observing with Plato, and soon was counting the pretty moon sheep mountains. Montes Teneriffe, Pico, Piton and all the rest of the flock. The tip of Promontorium Laplace was swathed in morning sunlight and it looked like the steep face of El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley. It was tall and straight, with huge shadows. I can't wait until the whole Sinus Iridum becomes visible. It's something I look forward to every month.

The next area that screamed at me for a look was Montes Riphaeus and Ural. The crater Euclides had a pointy dunce-cap shaped shadow that was three or four times as long as the crater appeared wide. The shadow of Euclides touched the terminator last night. A small wrinkle ridge of Oceanus Procellarum could be seen in the shadow of the terminator. This dark snakey line against the darkness is unnamed in RUKL. Apollo 16 crossed the central highlands in 1972 and Ken Mattingly snapped a lovely picture of this area of the moon. It's one of the exquisite lunar photographs in Michael Light's "Full Moon". RULK 41 and 42 show this area.

But something was missing from my observing experience. Oh, yeah, it was Wednesday night, and the Grateful Dead Hour was on the local Beserkley Public Radio station, KPFA 94.1 FM. I hardly ever remember to listen to it, but I love that show. So I opened the door to the pig, turned on the radio, and suddenly life was even better than good. It was groovy! A live performance from a live member of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir and his band Ratdog was meandering through the air waves. Now I really was in heaven.

The South Polar region was beautiful and reminded me of a night I sketched it last year. It was the 10th day of the lunar cycle then too.

I scanned over the moon at high power until another interesting area caught my eye. Agatharchides and Hippalus were filled with and connected by snakey pools of darkness. The area is shown on RUKL 52 and 53. I made a sketch of the area because I thought I saw a ray emenating from the crater identified as N. The ray was pointing into the flooded basin of the crater through a wall created by the little crater identified on RUKL 52 by the unique designation "N." I'm not sure if it was a ray or not. The chunky walls of Agatharchides were brightly illuminated like undulating hills. Ghost crater Hippalus was prominent ...at least two thirds of the crater wall were creating a huge shadow into the flooded remains of the crater itself. Rimae Hippalus runs through the middle of the Hippalus basin towards Agatharchides. This is a beautiful area and worth a look on another night. It's hard not to stop at all the 5 star objects in this area but I concentrated on subtle standouts last night.

In between all these observations I kept my eye one the horizon. I made a mental line between Bellatrix, Alnitak and Saiph in Orion, and then continued the line down to Eta Leporis. The comet was near Zeta Leporis, which is sort of a leg of the bunny if you stretch your imagination a bit. I could barely see the stars, so I climbed Azalea Hill in the moonlight for a better look towards the west. Another 300 feet helped quite a bit, and I was sure I saw a dust bunny, or bunny tail comet like fuzzball throught my 9 x 63 Celestron binos. A real jackrabbit hopped by in the moonlight, and I caught a glimpse of his fuzzy tail as he darted off on some important bunny business.

I think that was my last chance to see the comet unless I do some southerly traveling soon. But I'm not complaining. I had some great looks of it in dark skies with great horizons last week. During the new moon week, a hunt for comet Linear A2 was part of the nightly warmup exercises I performed on four successive near-all-nighters at a darker but not so nearby location.

I walked back down the hill, enjoyed the tunes on the radio and looked at the moon some more, and drove home.

Jane, observing from 37-58N, -122.31W