A Brief Clearing

Despite a forecast for clouds - including some late night snow, my sky was mostly clear at sunset. A nice, white, waxing gibbous moon was slowly climbing upwards in the east. The year was new. This wasn't the time to skip a potential observing opportunity - not even a brief one.

I got out a cheap aluminum and plastic camera tripod, attached a mostly plastic 50mm f/10 Galileoscope and replaced the original eyepiece with an old 12mm University Optics Plossl. In the slowly darkening twilight this setup was taken outside to the "Colosseum" - a small, walled circular area that I keep free of snow for just such opportunities.

In the center of the Colosseum the skinny little tripod legs were fully extended and the center post was raised sufficiently to bring the eyepiece to my standing eye-level. Would I want to use a filter to darken the moon? I pointed the scope at our nearest natural neighbor in space, focussed, and decided why not? I went back inside for a variable polarizing filter.

With the filter screwed into the eyepiece barrel and adjusted to block a fair amount of light I once again took a look at the moon. Ah yes! That was definitely more comfortable! Focus was soon achieved. The moon occupied about 1/3 of the eyepiece's field of view. What should I sketch?

At the very "top" (in the eyepiece view) of the moon, along the terminator, was a large, narrow, smooth-floored ellipse with a bright far wall. I made a quick sketch of the walled-plain Schickard. About half of Schickard's gently curved floor was in shadow. A feature immediately south of Shickard was added to the sketch. The added "feature" might have been an apparent merging of Nasmyth and Phocylides C.

The temperature was +28 degrees F. The sky was rapidly filling with clouds.. Out of long habit I removed the Galileoscope from the tripod, put it in a plastic bag (that once upon a time contained a cheap, new, camera tripod) and placed the bagged scope into the tripod's cloth bag and zipped the bag shut. This procedure keeps moisture from forming on a cold scope when bringing it into a warmer environment. Within minutes the sky was totally clouded over.

After the scope has had time to warm up sufficiently I'll unbag it and allow sufficient time for any lingering moisture (unlikely) to fully evaporate before re-bagging it for longer term storage.

For me, there will be no comet tonight - not in Lupus, not in Lepus, not even in Eridanus!!

Sketcher,
To sketch is to see.

Nice, Sketcher! Sort of feels like I was there...
Marty