The lunar journey begins! Besides the Moon observing, there was also time to look for other objects in our universe – constellations and their asterisms and special stars, Messier objects and even a couple of satellites that passed by - General Session - July 30, 2017.
Lunar Phase: First Quarter (53.2%)
Q-Day: 0
Moonrise: 10:47 AM
Sunrise: 5:32 AM Sunset: 9:05 PM
Location: Home
Date: 2017-07-30
Time: 7:20 PM – 9:10 PM
Temperature: 18° C
Equipment: 10” Meade SCT, 30 mm + 10 mm
Magnification: x83 + x250
Transparency: not recorded
Seeing: not recorded
This was my first time looking through our 10” Meade SCT and getting my brain wrapped around the mirror view. Without any go-to or other source of mechanical movement, Jerry and I had to manually move the scope to the desired position. We jokingly referred to this scope as the “push-to”.
There was disappointment in that some of the items listed at Q-day 0 could not be seen; they were beyond the dark portion of the terminator, such as Herschel, Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel. However, I was able to identify 2 items on the list for Q-Day -1:
- Montes Haemus – the mountain range on the south border of the Mare Serenitatis.
- Manilius – located on the border of the Montes Haemus.
- Aristoteles
- Eudoxus
- Mare Serenitatis
Most of the 2 hours of this observing session was dedicated to sketching the Lunar X, first with 30 mm eyepiece and then the 10 mm. However, there was time to identify other lunar features.
