Full Moon Rising, Very Slight Terminator
Posted: 19 October 2013
The observatory was opened Friday, 18 October 2013, at 1810 MST, 75°F. The sky was clear. At 1816 MST, viewed Mercury, then Saturn, 83X, both very low in the western sky. Then took a quick look at Venus, 83X.
I then began watching for the Full Moon to rise over the hill to the east. The moon was about 1 hour past precisely full when it appeared:
Click the photo above to see a sequence of photos showing the rising moon. I changed my position after the first two photos. And unfortunately, the focus slipped for the latter photos.
At 1832 MST, viewed the Full Moon through the 8" LX200-ACF at 83X. No terminator was visible. I switched to a different eyepiece (77X) with a moon filter attached. Without the moon filter the Full Moon was just too bright to view comfortably. I mounted the D7000 DSLR at prime focus of the 8", but I needed to use a focal reducer to get the entire lunar disk in the camera field-of-view. I removed the camera, added the focal reducer, and remounted the camera. This photograph was taken at 1855 MST, 1/320sec, ISO 100:
Removed the camera and focal reducer, and at 1913 MST, began a tour of the lunar limb at 206X. A very slight terminator was now visible. I handheld the iPhone 5s over the eyepiece and did some video recordings of the view at 206X. This is a frame from a video:
At various times during the evening I did some moonlit terrestrial viewing using my 2X nightscope.
At 1937 MST, I took a last look at the Full Moon with the moon filter, 77X.
The observatory was closed at 1952 MST, 62°F.
Comments are welcome; use the Comments section below, or you can Email Me. Thanks.
Cassiopeia Observatory Home Page
