Youngest/oldest Moon you have observed/photographed?

Mark wrote:
Sky and Tel has discussed this quite a bit lately, and I managed to
snap a pic of the 24 hour, 28 minute old Moon tonight just before it
slipped below the roofline of the house across the street. I am about
25 feet above sea level (central Florida).

http://www.geocities.com/smalldob/images/ymp_020905.JPG

Nice shot.

The youngest Moon I've observed was 22 hours 15 minutes old, on 7
September 2002, 6:24 local time; New Moon was 8:09 the previous night.
That may not be the absolute record, but I contend that it is the
youngest Moon seen by an observer who was then driving his car toward
the north. (Yes, I did verify it by the side of the road, and no, I
don't recommend you try this at home.)

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Third contact during an eclipse.

Bob

"Mark" wrote in message
ps.com...
Sky and Tel has discussed this quite a bit lately, and I managed to
snap a pic of the 24 hour, 28 minute old Moon tonight just before it
slipped below the roofline of the house across the street. I am about
25 feet above sea level (central Florida).

http://www.geocities.com/smalldob/images/ymp_020905.JPG

The pic was taken with an Astele 70mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope,
using a Kodak DC4800 digital camera couple afocally to a TeleVue 32mm
Plossl. The camera was set to f/2.8, ISO 200, and I used a half second
exposure. The image needs to be flipped horizontally and vertically,
of course, to get the true orientation of the Moon, but I left it the
way it is for the date/time stamp. Brightness and contrast were pumped
up just a bit to increase visibility.

If you get an error message, try later.

Mark

This has been discussed before on SAA as well as in S&T. In an old
thread from Jan. 1996, Jim Stamm logs seeing a 12 hour and 7 minute old
Moon from Arizona. Tom Polakis and Pierre Schwaar observed the same
Moon about a half hour later if I am reading correctly.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...dd7f8345820ed3

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...4cf87f242b280b

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...2fdd853114 2e


The S&T article lists the current optically aided record as 11 hours,
40 minutes by Mohsen Ghazi Miraseed in Iran and also mentions a 2004
effort involving Jim Stamm.

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing...cle_1421_1.asp

Mark




Stan Jensen wrote:
On May 5, 1989, Terry Hunefeld, Kevin Jung, and Bruce Sidell spotted
a
13 hr. 40 min. crescent moon near Grand Rapids, Michigan. This just
missed the old record by 12 minutes which was, oddly enough, set just
12 minutes earlier by Robert Victor in Lansing, Michigan.

This blew past the previous record by an hour or so. They even got
written up in the Sept. 1989 Sky and Telescope.

S.

"Florian" wrote in message
...
http://home.earthlink.net/~tonyhoffman/LunarVistas.htm


Tony, very nice.

-Florian

Thanks, Florian.
--Tony

Brian, good job of logging the observation. I confess to also yielding
to the temptation to look out the window or make use of my MOON ROOF
for a little impromptu sky scanning when the traffic is light That's
what it's for, right? ;-)

Mark



Brian Tung wrote:

The youngest Moon I've observed was 22 hours 15 minutes old, on 7
September 2002, 6:24 local time; New Moon was 8:09 the previous
night.
That may not be the absolute record, but I contend that it is the
youngest Moon seen by an observer who was then driving his car toward
the north. (Yes, I did verify it by the side of the road, and no, I
don't recommend you try this at home.)

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Thanks, Mark. Despite the tight timing, at least you were able to react
quickly enough to get the shot of such a young Moon--an amazing feat.
--Tony

"Mark" wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks, I neglected to mention that the dark shadow cutting across the
top of the picture is the roofline of the neighbors' house, so I
literally did this with only seconds to spare, and that the camera was
set to 3X optical zoom. I vaguely knew that tonight would be a good
opportunity but didn't prepare very well at all. After realizing I had
the opportunity, there was barely enough time to assemble the tripod
and scope, set the camera to about what I knew it should be, center the
Moon in the eyepiece, couple the camera to it and snap the picture. In
hindsight I should have also zoomed out and taken one with more stuff
in the background to frame the shot better. Of course with the Moon
moving its own width every two minutes, there isn't much time to
improvise.

Very nice image Tony.

Mark


tony hoffman wrote:
Nice. The youngest I've seen was about 30 hours. The youngest I've
photographed was this:
http://home.earthlink.net/~tonyhoffman/LunarVistas.htm
at about 53 hours.
--Tony

My personal best stands at 15h 18m, set back in the early 1990's. What
I found surprising was that this was accomplished from right in my own
front yard at near sea level. About a year or so earlier I had seen a
15h 22m old moon from the summit of Mount Wilson and had thought it
unlikely I could ever better that mark. Perhaps worth noting while on
this subject is that I was the first person ever to report seeing the
opposing lunar crescents on consecutive days (old moon in the morning
of one day, young moon the following evening), a much tougher trick
than spotting extremely young moons. Joe Ashbrook, S&T's editor several
decades ago and the creator of the young moon sighting fad, once wrote
that he considered this feat might be impossible. Sadly, he had passed
on before I accomplished it since he had a great interest in the
subject of extreme lunar sightings.

Incidentally, be very cautious in accepting at face value claims of
extremely young moons. Back when I wrote for S&T I asked several well
known amateurs outside the magazine to look into some of the claimed
sightings that had been reported in their area of the country. In
several of the instances it was found that clouds had previal or the
local terrain would have precluded any possibility of such a sighting
being made on the occasion in question. I'm afraid not everybody is
completely honest when it comes to claiming to have broken records.

JB

Hi, thanks for the info and the note about observing both sides of the
new moon cycle. I agree that seeing the very old Moon is tougher than
the very young one. I looked for one in January that was in the 25-ish
hour before new range but couldn't find it even in a binocular.

Was your sighting unaided or aided, and if aided, with what instrument?
The S&T article mentions O'Meara's sighting unaided of a 15hr, 32min
Moon on Mt. Wilson in 1990 as the unaided record.

Mark


CNJ999 wrote:
My personal best stands at 15h 18m, set back in the early 1990's.
What
I found surprising was that this was accomplished from right in my
own
front yard at near sea level. About a year or so earlier I had seen a
15h 22m old moon from the summit of Mount Wilson and had thought it
unlikely I could ever better that mark. Perhaps worth noting while on
this subject is that I was the first person ever to report seeing the
opposing lunar crescents on consecutive days (old moon in the morning
of one day, young moon the following evening), a much tougher trick
than spotting extremely young moons. Joe Ashbrook, S&T's editor
several
decades ago and the creator of the young moon sighting fad, once
wrote
that he considered this feat might be impossible. Sadly, he had
passed
on before I accomplished it since he had a great interest in the
subject of extreme lunar sightings.

Incidentally, be very cautious in accepting at face value claims of
extremely young moons. Back when I wrote for S&T I asked several well
known amateurs outside the magazine to look into some of the claimed
sightings that had been reported in their area of the country. In
several of the instances it was found that clouds had previal or the
local terrain would have precluded any possibility of such a sighting
being made on the occasion in question. I'm afraid not everybody is
completely honest when it comes to claiming to have broken records.

JB

Bob Schmall wrote:
Third contact during an eclipse.

Bob

"Mark" wrote in message
ps.com...

Sky and Tel has discussed this quite a bit lately, and I managed to
snap a pic of the 24 hour, 28 minute old Moon tonight just before it
slipped below the roofline of the house across the street. I am about
25 feet above sea level (central Florida).

http://www.geocities.com/smalldob/images/ymp_020905.JPG

The pic was taken with an Astele 70mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope,
using a Kodak DC4800 digital camera couple afocally to a TeleVue 32mm
Plossl. The camera was set to f/2.8, ISO 200, and I used a half second
exposure. The image needs to be flipped horizontally and vertically,
of course, to get the true orientation of the Moon, but I left it the
way it is for the date/time stamp. Brightness and contrast were pumped
up just a bit to increase visibility.

If you get an error message, try later.

Mark




All right all, Ill bite
What's all this reference to a young/old moon ?
Regards
Phil

John Bortle wrote:

My personal best stands at 15h 18m, set back in the early 1990's.

Incidentally, be very cautious in accepting at face value claims of
extremely young moons.


Hi John,

Later in this thread, somebody has pointed to my discussion on this
group of a sighting of a 12 1/2 hour old moon from Arizona in 1996. I
was with Pierre Schwaar, who was on a campaign to set the record.
Everything was just about optimal: the ecliptic stood nearly straight
up, the moon was near perigee, sky transparency was excellent, and our
horizon near Sentinel, AZ resembled an ocean horizon.

When Pierre swept it up, it was unmistakeable as a 60-degree, unbroken
arc, much unlike the descriptions of "Baily's Beads" I had read about.
Several of us were able to view it for about five minutes through his
8" RFT. The next day we learned that Jim Stamm in Tucson viewed it a
half hour earlier. Pierre challenged Jim's sighting, but I'm sure it
was legitimate as well.

Tom