by Marek Cichanski
When there's a really killer humongous Pacific storm coming ashore in the morning, it means that there might be some clearing behind the front. It's happened once already this winter, and it looks like it's working a little bit tonight, too. I managed to observe the moon a bit during clear patches this evening. Hoping to look at Saturn and Jupiter later on.
Seeing was only fair to middling, 2-3 out of 5. I used a 16mm Nagler and 9mm Nagler on my ED80, for magnifications of 38x and 67x, respectively. It didn't look like it was worth going much higher. Sometimes, even though the Moon was in a clear patch of sky, wind-borne raindrops would start falling on me and my scope. I had to cover the objective quickly, and sometimes even dab raindrops off of it.
Man, that's hard up, ain't it? Getting rained on WHILE observing. We are a hurtin' bunch of folk here in ol' NoCal. Of course, we could also say that we're just that much more hardcore. Cyclonic storms? Bring 'em on. We'll observe behind the front, though holes in the clouds. We're TAC. We will not be denied. Reminds me of what someone, probably Mallory, said before the first Everest expedition way back in 1921. Someone pointed out that climbing a 29,000' peak in hob-nailed boots and woolen jackets might be a bit daunting. He replied "We shall stamp to the top with the wind in our teeth." Yeah, baby.
Here are the things that stood out on the moon tonight, as I remember them:
The terminator was crossing eastern Serenitatis and central Tranquillitatis. Crisium, Fecunditatis, and Nectaris were fully illuminated. Rupes Altai was looking great, with the scarp lit up white in the morning sun. The main craters that stood out were, from south to north, Piccolimini, Theophilus, and Posidonius. Piccolimini had very nice illumination, and it was very clear that it overlaps the Rupes Altai, for a nice age-relationship.
Theophilus was wonderfully illuminated, with the floor in darkness, the rim illuminated, and the central peak just barely beginning to catch the light. A connoisseur's illumination. The central peak slowly showed a second sub-summit. Beautiful! One could also see that Theophilus overlaps Cyrillus, again showing a progression of ages.
Posidonius also looked beautiful, and the shadow of its rim was cast across Mare Serenitatis to the west. The shadow was jagged and irregular. I haven't seen a crater rim cast such a dramatic shadow across a mare plain like this very often. I guess that there aren't too many big craters on the eastern sides of maria. Kind of like seeing the sun set over salt water if you live on the East Coast. Yeah, you can see it happen over the Chesapeake Bay, but that's about it. A short distance to the south, Mons Argaeus was casting a nice dramatic shadow across Serenitatis, too. I love mountains like this that lie at the ends of promontories. This mountain lies just to the west of the valley of Taurus-Littrow, the Apollo 17 landing site. Jack Schmitt, Gene Cernan, the orange soil, and all that. A classic story for the ages. I, stupidly, forgot to pick out that particular valley during this session, though.
There was a very nice wrinkle ridge visible near the western edge of Mare Nectaris, although Rukl doesn't give it a name. It extended from Theophilus to a crater called Beaumont. Sure enough, this crater is named for an early geologist, Leonce Elie de Beaumont. (He also has a big mountain in New Zealand named after him.) Although he was off the mark in his estimates of the time required for mountain-building episodes, he did some pioneering work in how to work out the relative ages of strata and geologic events. It seemed appropriate, given the nice age-relationships visible in the neighborhood. (Maybe that was deliberate.)
There was a circular feature in the mare somewhere, that reminded me of a giant MER RAT grind mark. Might have been the feature Lamont. I've been looking at Spirit and Opportunity images too much lately, I guess.
Well, that's all I saw in the short time available. Hopefully it'll clear up again soon and I can look at Saturn and Jupiter.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Wed Feb 25 19:26:26 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Fri Mar 12 21:14:57 2004 PT