'I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the Moon'
We had unexpectedly amazing views of the aurora at latitide 52 degrees N on the night of 10th/11th May 2024. It is clear that the activity is visible entirely in the northern portion of the sky. The intensity hit KP9/ Extreme storm (G5) on the KP scale, a reading last seen in 2003.
Sketch made on Moon day 11
Sketched with white and black charcoal on black paper at the eyepiece over 30 mins between 20h and 21h UT. Again, the sketch was started before the fall of darkness which makes the initial outlining of the main elements on the paper somewhat easier. It was a dramatic sight in the low, slanting light at the Terminator. The terraces on the the crater walls were visible at times though no detail on the surface of the central plain was evident in the conditions.
Sketch made on Moon day 8
Sketched with white and black charcoal on black paper at the eyepiece over 30 mins between 20h and 21h UT, so the sketch was in fact started before the fall of darkness. Archimedes lies exactly on the illuminated side of the terminator.
Photographed with the Moon at first quarter at precisely the day/time that this transient effect is visible. I was looking along the terminator and attempting to identify some of the prominent craters when all of a sudden this jumped out at me. I swear that if I had tried to find it it would have taken hours! The effect is actually only visible for approx four hours or so on one day a month when the Moon is at first quarter (lunar day 6.9). The next date it is visible is the 17th March by my…
An evening of superb views and experiments in image making.
Lucky imaging: best 25% frames from 10000 video frames.
The huge crater Copernicus displays clear ejecta rays and lines of mini craters caused by the scattering of debris from the meteor impact that created it many millions of years ago.
I thought it was worth trying sketching again considering the diabolical weather. This is done with white charcoal pencil on black cartridge paper (and so isn’t reversed in the scan). This I found actually much easier than sketching in pencil. It shows the craters Orontius, Saussure, Huggins, Nasireddin and Miller and is drawn from a photo taken at 21h15 on 28th April this year.
Lucky imaging: mosiac of 9 images using best 25% or 50% frames from 500 video frames.
A beautiful halo showed all evening today. Jupiter is also visible just to the right of the Moon.
Also showing some of the prominent craters and features in the North-East quadrant
Lucky imaging: best 25% frames from 2000 video frames. Mosaic of two images
