The moon is a bright mistress

The moon is a bright mistress, well ok, that's a bad reworking of
Heinlein's book title!

What i've found is that studying the moon with my short tube 80mm
telescope can be a painfully bright experience, especially at full
moon, even with maximum magnification (10mm with barlowx2 gives x80 on
this).

Looking along the 'edges' of the disc yields some great views of
shadows over craters but tycho is almost 'whited out'

i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

Hi:

If the Moon is too bright (it is not bright enough to harm your eyes, not by a
long shot), I'll generally up the magnification a little. If you must use a
filter, I recommend a polarizing filter or a color filter/combination of color
filters. I've found the neutral density filters sold as "Moon filters" to be of
generally poor quality. The color filters and polarizing filters may also
reveal details not visible without a filter. A Moon filter will just dim the
image.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

gswork wrote:
The moon is a bright mistress, well ok, that's a bad reworking of
Heinlein's book title!

TANSTAAFL!

On 6 Sep 2004 00:49:42 -0700, (gswork) wrote:
i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

Personally, I prefer to just use white light on my moon charts and
avoid becoming dark-adapted. I tried a moon filter and didn't like it
because it had a green tint and I've just never gotten around to
buying a neutral-density filter. Gotta do that one of these days.

Les Blalock
http://www.txastro.com

from gswork:
i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

If you're only going to be checking-out Luna during your observing session, the
sometimes extreme brightness will not harm your eyes.
But it certainly won't help your dark-adaptation for views of other targets
later in the night.
Orion, among others, has a nice neutral density filter which can help:
http://www.telescope.com/shopping/pr...mID=105&itemTy
pe=PRODUCT&iMainCat=6&iSubCat=22&iProductID=105

SSX

On 6 Sep 2004 00:49:42 -0700, gswork wrote:

The moon is a bright mistress


Unlike Monica Lewinsky ;o)

(Rod Mollise) wrote in message ...

i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

Hi:

If the Moon is too bright (it is not bright enough to harm your eyes, not by a
long shot), I'll generally up the magnification a little. If you must use a
filter, I recommend a polarizing filter or a color filter/combination of color
filters. I've found the neutral density filters sold as "Moon filters" to be of
generally poor quality. The color filters and polarizing filters may also
reveal details not visible without a filter. A Moon filter will just dim the
image.

i might look at another eyepiece to push magnification up a little,
10mm is the smallest i have now. i guess 6 or 7 mm through the barlow
will make a difference

Les Blalock wrote in message . ..
On 6 Sep 2004 00:49:42 -0700, (gswork) wrote:
i guess many of you use moon filters or save moon viewing for crescent
phases. Do you have any recommendations, or other tips? thanks

Personally, I prefer to just use white light on my moon charts and
avoid becoming dark-adapted. I tried a moon filter and didn't like it
because it had a green tint and I've just never gotten around to
buying a neutral-density filter. Gotta do that one of these days.

good point, i had been checking a couple of stars before so the sudden
transition to viewing the moon was probably unwise!