a little observing of the moon and 4 planets..

After spending alot of time and effort into putting in a new floor in the observatory in my back garden, Gordon and I had a good observing session on Monday the 22nd using the 12" LX200 and its new GPS fork.
We started off by nailing Mercury, it was barely visible through the finder, about half an hour before sunset, it was located about 8 degrees from the Sun, I was very carefull and shaded the scope using the domes wall from the Sun, any of that light/heat in the 12" would be a disaster. I had a good look down the front of the scope and put my hand up to the eyepiece several times to reassure myself all was well.
What we saw was a small bright disk, hard to focus and was fairly bright, given the recent article in sky and telescope I had a good look to see if there any hints of surface details, but it was so low in the sky and shimmering like crazy, it was difficult to focus so there no hint of any detail.
We then tried Venus, abit of a relief I have to say as its twice as far from the Sun, about 16 degrees, the Sun makes me nervous, it was a dazelling bright disk, not quite full.
While waiting for the Sun to set and the sky to get dark, we concentrated alot of out time on the Moon, I had the PC turned on with "virtual moon map", a superb free lunar map program. We were running the scope with a 1.5x binoviewer and 15mm series 400 meade plossls, giving us a power of 300x, the image was suitably dimmed by this power. Seeing was good with big slow moment of seeing, no crazy fast shimmering thankfully.
It was amazing to watch the shadows change beyond the Caucuses mountains, I'm trying to remember did I count 12 or 13 individual peak shadows, and it was interesting to try and link back to exactly where in the mountain range each shadow peak came from, you could see the very edges of the Appenine range coming into the lunar daytime. Watching craters such as Aristillus and Autolycos emerging from the terminator was stunning. Mt Piton was dazzelingly white as it shands well above its surroundings so was visible while still well inside the night time side of the Moon, the blast rays immediately surrounding Aristillus were unbelievably detailed, the effect was immediately lost when you closed one eye while looking through the binoviewer, We were also able to clearly see a flooded lunar crater just north of it, it name wasnt in virtual moon atlas but its crater rim was very defined as it emerged from the shadows. Watching Cassini craters shadow change was dramatic, the alps valley was also emerging but its floor was in shadow which is a pity as it would have been interesting to see if the central line would have been visible.
We scanned down the Moon during the night several times and came across craters such albategnius and hipparchus, the detailed shadows within the first crater caused by its walls were simply amazing, you could very clearly see numerous little shadow peaks and it was great to check it every now and then to see how the had reduced in size and watch them draw away from the central mountain peaks.
Panning the scope to the moons southern areas, it became a jumble of tortured and overlapping craters, Stofler was very interesting as it consisted of a serious of overlapping craters.
Later we got a good view of Mars, its polar caps and some dark featues, we also got in Saturn with 3 of its moon, the haze was building up at this stage, so the moons were hard to see.
We easily spent 6-7 hours observing and spend 4-5 hours of it moon gazing, we took a break for some well needed food and tea half ways through.
I've often had a good look at the Moon, but never with a decent map at the eyepiece, using the PC to point out the craters brought a whole new dimension to it, I'm seriously considering getting a second 14mm UWA eyepiece so I can use it in the binoviewer, astromart here I come.
Gordon, feel free to jump in and add anything I've forgotton.

Sounds like a good session Dave, all your work on the floor paid off. The 12" must ive some detail with the binoviewer added!

Keith.

Hi Keith,
The binoviewer makes a huge differance.
Its a Russian, probably Soviet metal binoviewer, old but all metal and of great quality.