by Phil Chambers
Interesting. At the day and time you guys were looking at Gassendi, so was I from my backyard. I was checking out a 9.25 OTA that I temporarily have in my possession. I had it mounted on my GP. I didnt quite have enough weight for it so it was loading the RA motor in a funny manner but it was doing OK when just tracking. The GP is overmatched with the 9 but almost acceptable. I did crank it up to about 670 in a fit of "lets floor it and see what this baby will do". That, of course, overran the seeing and probably the scope but the decision was then "what portion of Gassendi do I focus on. LOL. (surprisingly, i was getting a "seeable" image, however)
I was seeing considerable more detail than the photo. The ridges were rocky looking in the 9 and there were some radial scarfs showing the same thing. THere were two large triangular shaped areas that used the ridgeline toward the bottom of the main crater. I dont see any trace of the radials except for one on the right side. I didnt make a sketch but remember pretty well because it was one of the few times the mountains and ridges did not look rounded but harsh and shaped. This was with 188 and 336x (12.5 UO ortho and 7mm UO ortho)
I did compare the 12 radian with the 12.5 ortho. The view through the radian looked about like the picture, just a little better. The view through the ortho was a step up in detail, however, but a small step.
The peaks were very craggy and detailed, not rounded.
Needless to say, I gave the 9 an "A" and packaged it back up. The seeing was in and out but was reasonably good.