| Lunation | 1039 |
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| Phase | Waxing Gibbous |
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| Age | 9d11h58m |
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| Elongation | 122.16° |
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| % Illuminated | 76.6% |
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| Magnitude | -11.3 |
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| Altitude | 62.79° |
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Peter had said that it looked like the Moon was underwater tonight but it had cleared off a lot by the time I got there and the seeing was not too bad although there was a little wavering.
We started off observing at the bottom of Mare Imbrium in the neighborhood of Copernicus and Eratosthenes. Below Eratosthenes I picked up the ghost crater Stadius which must be too indistinct to be seen in binoculars or a small telescope because Cherrington doesn’t mention it at all. Grego says it is 69 km across and has low, thin, broken walls. He also mentions some rounded hills connection it to Eratosthenes, which I saw and Peter felt were more of a sinuous mountain range which I could see, and a chain of small craters, a catena, to the west of Stadius which I also picked up. Peter found another shorter chain passing through Stadius.
Peter called my attention to the still librated eastern limb where the far wall of Mare Smythii was strongly illuminated and the mare floor didn’t appear as dark as other mare, not much darker than the cratered highlands in front of it. Mare Australe appeared as an area of disconnected dark splotches inboard of the limb.
Back beneath Mare Imbrium we looked at Bullaldus and after some discussion about the interpretation of what constituted isolated Peter finally got me to find Rupes Recta, the Straight Wall, which I thought I had in my mine as being perpendicular and closer to Rupes Altai, where they are widely separated and more or less parallel to eachother.
We looked at Clavius and Peter pointed out a smaller crater with a central peak nearby which he identified as Tycho. I remarked at how small it looked and he said that was also his first reaction. This is probably the first time that I have actually seen the crater itself and not the ejecta blanket that surrounds it and becomes the rays. From there we looked on the other side of Clavius at another well formed crater with a central peak, possibly Morteus but I don’t remember a name now. You could plainly see wall slumping with at least two benches identifiable. Peter pointed out more small craters on the floor of Clavius and a discussion on frame of reference ensued as he was speaking of them being caused by ejecta and I was thinking of ejecta from Clavius and said it couldn’t be, while he was talking of ejecta from the Rutherfords. I am thinking that I want one of those big S&T laminated Moon maps that folds in quarters that you can fold however you want it to show whatever half of the Moon you need. It would be so much easier following each other’s directions if we could point at a nice big diagram.
Somewhere in this area we looked at an oblong crater pair that has the heel and ball-of-the-foot footprint morphology. It looked to me like the “heel” was a younger crater that had impacted on or near the wall of the older crater.
We looked in the neighborhood of Fra Mauro, where the Apollo 14 mission landed. Peter described it as a raised area and to me it looked like the shape of the state of Maine.
I slewed up to the Alps to see the Alpine Valley which looked like a flat gap through the mountains running away from me. What struck me was a series of peaks in the Alps to the NW of the Alpine Valley that had a somewhat circular layout about the size of Plato right next door. It looks like a crater with a central peak which Peter pointed out would have had a double peak.
Palus Somni looked very nice in this lighting as did the highlands between Mare Tranquilitatis, Mare Fecunditatis and Mare Nectaris.
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