Hi everyone. This is the report of Friday night at the Martello Tower in Sandymount. It was great to meet up with Liam Smyth, Bob O'Brien, Roger, Paul Byrne and Paul Walsh. Skies were reasonably clear at the start. And before the stars came out, what other object is there to look at only the Moon? It was almost half phase and seven days old. We were hoping to see the Lunar X which was on the terminator at 12 noon. I could identify the feature -but it was well in from the terminator. The craters responsible for this apparition are: Purbach, La Caille, Blanchinus and Werner. The X was not distinctive enough -although it was visible.
The northern part was very interesting indeed. The Alpine Valley was quite stunning. What stole the show for me was Mons Piton -an isolated mountain 2250 metres high. There was also a very strange feature right on the terminator just south of Mons Piton. It is on Map 12 of Antonin Rukl's book Atlas of the Moon and is simply labelled by the Greek letter Gamma. According to Bob O'Brien's App it is a flooded crater.
Paul Byrne got a glimpse of Jupiter -but the sky was becoming increasingly more hazy and people started to go home. Soon there was only Paul Walsh and his son Joshua left, and the only stars visible were Arcturus and Vega.
However, I thought that I would have a go at spotting Izar (Epsilon Bootis). Despite the fact the star was invisible, I found it in the guidescope at 11X. What amazed all 3 of us was we could split it at a mere 112X!!. I normally need 167X to get a clean split, but last night we split it at 112X, 140X and 167X. The primary was orange and the secondary was a slight blue -beautiful. What clearly was happening was the thick hazy sky conditions was causing the primary to be dimmer.
We went home at midnight. What say we do all again on either Friday 14 or 21 June?
Aubrey.
  