Before the Wolf moon....

Carol Widger

Simple to load the car when you observe with a 50mm refractor. left the tripod assenbled and packed Calliope in her case, a folding campstool and astro-bag. The smaller Sky&Tel laminated moonmap is just about perfect for this scope. We toodled out west of town, past Stafford reservoir and over the hill to Hicks Valley. A little ways northwest in the middle of the valley near Marins last remanining one-room schoolhouse. We parked off the road nearby the pond there and had a warm burritos for suppper by moonlight. Seeing, for anything other than the moon, would have to be considered dismal, but this was the first time out for weeks, so I was happy. I set up the scope by the red taillights of the car and aimed at the just-past-halfmoon overhead. This Pentax zoom eyepiece I think was built for a spotting scope of shorter focal length. With my only 1.25 " adapter being a 45 degree amici prism, it was too bulky and ghosty for this little refractor~ back into the boxes!

The star prism and a new little 12 mm.965 konig from Scopehed on ebay, all of 13.95, turned out to be the fitting lunar eyepiece for this evening's cruise. I could not star-test the Konig last night, but used it on the moon, nice wide flat field, no ghosting or flashing, no color on the edges of the moon at all. Sharp contrast all the way across, definitely a keeper! The silly thing has a camouflage housing, I imagine from some military or hunter type binoculars, and well matched to Calliope . She's a delightful observing buddy.

Plato shone like a ring on the plains of the north, the Appenines a sentinal wall anchored by Eristhothanes. The terminator sliced neatly through Copernicus, The scope drifted along in Sinus Aestum, and south. A line of placid craters from Sinus Medei along the left side of Mare Nubium basked in the cold sun. Tycho popped into center field, a study in symmetry and contrast, hald dark shadowed along the cliffs and the center mountain stark and reversed . Lower down, Clavius's sharp rim protected a gentle flat valley with two small craters on the lower left. The scabby south polar region buckled inhospitably, turning the areas around Blancanus, Casatus and Kalproth into pits of dispair.

Cirrus clouds were closing ranks, ignorable before, but now shading the face of the moon. A wide double lunar ring must mean good fortune for the Asian New year, half the sky aglow with moonlight and silver. Dairlyland smells, sharpened in the nose with the cooling air, conversational geese and and early corral of frogs settled in for the night. Don had a dvd on his player in the car, I could have stayed out here all night, but I forgot my gloves, and we do have to be up at 430 for work in the morning.

Medicine for the midwinter blues....
Clear skies and apple pies
Carol