Backyard in Fullerton, CA - 09-Aug-08

Jeff Gortatowski

Date Time: 08/10/08 - 04:00 to 06:30UT - (08/09/08 9pm - 11:30pm LMT)
Location: Fullerton, California
Conditions: Clear, Calm, 21C,
Seeing: 5-7 out of 10 variable, LM of about 3.5 ot 4.5 depending on direction Telescope: 20cm f/6 Starsplitter, Zambuto Primary
Oculars: 24mm Panoptic 50x and 100x, 11mm Nagler T6 109x and 218x, 2x AstroPhysics BARCON

INA - Surface feature of the moon. This D shaped depression was mentioned in a S&T article back a year or so ago. I like observing single features where I can read some background. The fact that Ina was not fully explained made it even more interesting. This is a pretty challenging feature. I started off near Rima Hadley, over the mountains near Mons Hadley Delta, over the triangle made by Colon, Galen, Aratus and into Lacus Felicitatis. After a lot of going back and forth to the pictures in Virtual Moon Atlas Pro, I was able at 218x to see the feature and the slightly brighter ridges nearby. I am quite sure I was seeing it, though not as the nice D shaped depression shown in VMA Pro! There is a small north south ridge line that separates the western long side from the eastern round shaped side of the 'lake of happiness'. Ina is directly east of the tip of the ridge line which itself does not completely cut off the western from the eastern sides.

Being so close to the area of the landing site of Apollo 15 I could not help but i.d. the area and look at Rima Hadley. The rill was chopped in two like an unfortunate snake by what I believe was the elongated shadow of one of the mountains surrounding the 'shores' of Mons Hadley Delta.

Descartes - This very large and shallow is crater pock marked by Descartes A on its southwestern edge and was also the subject of the same S&T 8/2007 article as Ina. (I copy most observing articles and file them by subject or season). The Apollo 16 site is not far away and was easy to id. The mission was to find out if the small hills in the area were volcanic in nature (they were not).

Jupiter - At 218x there was a wealth of detail. I should sketch this some day... just to try it. There is so little information on the correct paper and pencils.... a #2 just don't cut it. The GRS was transiting and the cyclone was seen as not one uniform color but more as a spiral of light red to salmon hues. Reminded me a bit of the carnival paintings made by spinning the cardboard.

I continued to observe and sketch a few doubles on the AL Double Star list. Sigma Ophiuci, Zeta Lyrae, STT 525, and Graffias.

Then I picked up another recent S&T article and estimated the northern sky at a LM of 4.5 as I could see Zeta UMi but not Eta. I could see Nu Draconis. From some of my backyard the LM seems to be 4.5, but towards the south I think it is more like 3.5.

Finally, grabbing another S&T article from 8/2008 I looked in the area of Theta Cgyni. There I guesstimated the magnitude of orangish RT Cygni at 7.3. In the same area is the nice easy double 16 Cygni. Easily split in the 24mm Panoptic, it shares the same FOV as a ghost replica of itself to the southeast. And of course there is NGC 6826 in the same FOV almost due east. The "Blinking Planetary" was quite easy to spot even at 50x.

My wife just watched the Exploratorium video with Bill Dean in the desert of China explaining his Solar scope setups. She turned around to me and said, "You should get one of those... I bet you get a lot of use out of one."

Solarmax 60 is about half off right now... :) Maybe... maybe not...

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Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky
Fullerton, California