Venus Dichotomy & the Moon

[Nightspore]

 

I went out yesterday in the early evening to catch Venus and the Moon. At 18:00 I was set-up. It was still daylight and the wafted smell of barbecued food was emanating from somewhere.

 

 

Venus was (more or less) at dichotomy and I was banking on the lunar terminator to show the Sea of Crises and the Petavius Rille well.

 

 

I decided to use the 127mm Mak and WO binoviewers. I only used the 20mm WO SWAN’s and 15mm SuperViews combined with a 1.6x GPC. These gave about 123x and 164x respectively. It took me a while to position myself well as I like to sit immediately behind the OTA. Eventually I could see the Moon but it took me a few moments to locate Venus.

 

 

Venus looked good at both magnifications although I preferred 123x. I thought there was a hint of cloud detail. It was still light enough for the glare not to be a problem and I had a polarising filter threaded into the GPC. As it got darker I removed the polarising filter and switched to viewing the Moon.

 

 

First thing I looked for was the Petavius Rille and I wasn’t disappointed. Conditions were still decent regardless of the fact that the Moon was setting. Inevitably I replaced the SWAN’s again for the SuperViews and 164x. The SuperViews aren’t expensive eyepieces but they’re easy to merge and lightweight on the bino. There are often varying FOV’s claimed for them, although that’s a bit irrelevant for my bino’s as they can only give 66° anyway (I believe the SWAN’s are actually 72°). I could see a lot of detail in the Sea of Crises and the 'Wrinkly Ridge' was awesome. The large crater Endymion was particularly impressive at both magnifications and I could see a fair bit of detail in the crater wall itself.

 

 

As the Moon got lower I could detect a slight ‘boiling’ and a bit of a breeze was occasionally rocking the scope slightly. So, after having a quick butcher’s at M42 I called it a night. I’d been out observing five nights in a row, which is pretty good for late March. 

 

 

Simulated images by courtesy of SkySafari 6 Pro & Moon Atlas

 

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Nightspore
I need a reason?

[Guest]

I was just about to compliment you on your annotated Moon shots but it was a good report, anyway!

[Nightspore]

41 minutes ago, Sunny Phil said:

I was just about to compliment you on your annotated Moon shots but it was a good report, anyway!

Thanks. The lunar pictures are screenshots off 'Moon Atlas', I believe they're detailed atlas paintings of some description, they look a bit like Rükl's. I rotated the first one in Photoshop to give a better idea of the actual orientation. It didn't work out as well as I wanted lol. So the second one is bog-standard orientation.

 

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/moon-atlas/id425233569?mt=12

 

 

None of my bino equipment is super expensive, but it all works well.