by Marek Cichanski
After standing down from MB, I set up my 6" Intes-Micro outside my garage at sunset. I looked at the moon pretty intently from about sunset until about 7 pm. This was the best interval of seeing.
I don't have my detailed notes handy, but I mostly looked at the areas around the Aristarchus Plateau and the crater Marius. These areas were both on or near the terminator.
When the terminator is placed like it was tonight, the show is all about lunar domes. Are they cinder cones? Are they shield volcanoes? Are they rhyolite domes? Are they the surface expressions of laccoliths? Goodness only knows. But they sure are dome-y. The Gruithuisen domes were looking fabulous. I spent a long interval at 300x, trying to see the 900m diameter summit crater on Mons Gruithuisen Gamma, but no joy. Herodotus Omega, a solitary dome south of Gruithuisen, came into view as I watched. Cool! Then it was down to the famous Marius Hills, a field of domes north of the crater Marius. They looked fabulous in the early morning light, very three-dimensional. So abundant they made the lunar surface in that area look like the surface of a pickle.
Went inside, scarfed some dinner, went back out to look at Saturn. Sadly, the seeing was never as good as it had been during twilight, but I got some occasional glimpses of good sharp detail. Tried again to see the E and F stars in the Trapezium. Must be an aperture challenge, because the scope was performing great. When the seeing had been better, it was giving amazing detail on the moon. I am very impressed with these optics. Also looked at Mars about a half hour before landing.
Went back in around 8:30 to wait nervously for news of Spirit. Saw the first posts on TAC. Tuned in CNN to see people jumping for joy. Yay! It made it! Watched CNN for a while more, surfed the web for news.
Went back out to look at Saturn again. Seeing wasn't much better, but it was good to be at the scope. Jupiter rose, but wasn't high enough to look at yet. Took a gander at the Beehive Cluster. Looked at Mars naked eye, and I swear it looked different. What a thing to contemplate.
Went back in around 11:30, I think. Checked on coverage of the MGS comms pass on the NASA TV web feed. Couldn't believe how smoothly I was getting it over my phone line. And sure enough...images!! The NASA folks were freaking out as one image after another came up on their giant monitor at JPL. One GUI window after another went up...it was almost too much. Then the first mosaics - I couldn't believe how fast they came up. Must have had that software ready and rarin' to go.
Watched the news conference at 12:30 am, then went out for a last look at Jupiter and a futile attempt to find the Leo Messier galaxies.
Chilly, possibly near freezing, but no dew on my equipment. Talk about lucky! What a night!