27 November 2006

Observing Location	VP
Observational Period	1230-1245T
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Scattered Clouds ~50% Temperature 61°F Wind Calm Humidity Moderate Feels Like Warm fall day It is generally hazy out with clouds covering the sky in the south. It took a bit to get the binocular focused. I didn't know if I was seeing distortion from poor focus or from haze. The Sun appeared a faint gray in the binocular and I was able to see all the dirt on my lenses. You could see the different thicknesses of cloud passing in front of the Sun. Transparency Poor Seeing II
Instruments	Canon 15x50 IS binocular w/Baader AstroSolar filter film - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Sunspots Constellation Sco The sun snuck across the border from Libra into Scorpius Saturday morning without my realizing it. I have had to go back and correct the past few sunspot records. Category Solar Time 20061127.1230 EST Comments Heliographic Latitude (B0) +1.32° Heliographic Longitude (L0) 190.24° Position Angle (P) +17.39° Carrington rotation number (CR) 2050 The view wasn't great today because of all of the haze. I didn't think I was going to see the spot but eventually found the focus for it. If there is anything else up there it must be the same size as the water droplets I am looking through because I am not seeing it.   Groups Spots R North 0 0 0 South 1 1 11 Total 1 1 11 R = (Groups * 10) + Spots) Group 926 Heliographic Latitude -10° Heliographic Longitude 140° Mcintosh System Axx The group was visible through the haze as a black spot and little more. As denser patches of cloud passed in front of the Sun a broad ring of facula became evident around the group.

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Observing Location	Met Oval
Observational Period	1730-2030 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Overcast Temperature 56°F Wind Calm Humidity 43% Feels Like Raw I wasn't able to see any stars but could see the moon fine. I don't know whether we have thin stratus clouds or just haze. NOAA is saying it was mostly cloudy at Central Park and Cloudy at LaGuardia Airport. It wasn't cold but the humidity made it feel a little uncomfortable at the end of the session. Transparency Fair Seeing II
Instruments	SAR: Coulter CT-100 Newtonian reflector - Charlie Cheerington: Exploring The Moon Through Binoculars and Small Telescopes
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Moon Constellation Aqr Category Lunar Time 20061127.1730 EST Comments Lunation 1038 Phase waxing crescent Age 7d0g11m First Quarter -0d8g0m Elongation 85.69°E % Illuminated 46.2% Magnitude -10.1 Altitude 35.57° I took Cheerington with me tonight and did a lot better than I did the other night with Grego. It is a big book to deal with at the eyepiece but at least at the oval there are benches that I can use for tables. I found almost everything he mentioned without too much difficulty. I started out just looking and trying to identify as much as I could from memory. Naked-eye the Maria look like a big alligator head with the eyes at the top of Mare Serenitatis, the upper jaw being Mare Tranquilitatis and Mare Foecunditatis, and the lower jaw Mare Tranquilitatis and Mare Nectaris. I guess Mare Crisium must be the fish that is jumping out of his way. Alps and the Alpine Valley T[heophilus], C[yrillus], and C[atherina] and the Altai Scarp Rays all around Proclus Next I moved to using the charts and trying to identify what I was seeing on them. That was a little bit more difficult, but I got some of it. Cheerington says to use either Chart II or Chart III. I found chart II to be an almost perfect match for what I was seeing. I can see the central peak in Theophilus at 21x. Cyrillus looks like a butte. Albategnius is very dark and looks like the walls are straight. I can see Horrocks, Class 1, 17x19 miles, 9200' deep, clearly on the floor of Hipparchus, which looks like a ghost crater with low, rounded walls, but is classed as a mountain-walled plain and is 83x89 miles across and 7500' deep. The terminator looks very straight all the way across the disk to near the southern limb where it bends slightly to the west. Lastly I read through the text and followed along at the eyepiece and in the charts. It looks like there is a chain of three small craters coming out of the bottom of Albategnius, a mountain-walled plain, 81 miles across and 14,400' deep. I found Hind, Class 1, 17 miles across and 9200' deep, next to Halley, Class 2, 22 miles by 9000', but could not detect Hipparchus C. Manluis, Class 1, 25 miles in diameter and 9300' deep is very prominent in Mare Vaporum as are Agrippa,Class 1, 28 mile diameter amd 9800' deep, and Godin, Class 1, 22 miles across by 10,500' deep, just east of Sinus Medii. Aristilus, Class 1, 36 miles by 10,500', and Autolycus, Class 1, 25 miles by 11,100', are just coming out of the shadow and are not easily seen. Cassini, Class 5, 36 miles across and 3500' deep. looks like its walls have been rounded off. Piton is a white point of light in a black field. The Alpine valley is a stripe of white through the mountains. I saw Barrow, 63x53 miles across and 7900 feet deep, but not Barrow A. Maniluis, Class 1, 25 mile diabeter and 9300' deep, has a hint of rays around it and Cheerington says it will develop a ray system at full Moon. Walter, a mountain-walled plain 78x88 miles across and 12,000’ deep, looks almost triangular and appears to have multiple peaks but Cherrington doesn’t mention anything about peaks. [Looking in the Astronomy Atlas of the Moon (Rukl) I see some craters on the floor which may be what I was seeing.] Aliacensis, Class 1, 46x55 miles and 12,900’ deep, looks like it could have a central peak but again nothing is mentioned. Blanchinus looks like it has been counter sunk and sanded off. Cherrington describes it as very old and battered. Stofler, Class 2, 68x85 miles, 7500’ deep, looks kind of elliptical with a bulge on the eastern end which is Faraday, Class 2, 33x44 miles, 7500’ deep. Faraday E, 20 miles by 4900’ and Faraday K, 25 miles by 5600’ run off to the SE as smaller black dots. Maurolycis is elongated N-S and looks like it is formed from thee craters . It looks like the southern part of its floor is raised above the level of the rest In Licetus-Heraclitus I can see part of the southern wall of Licetus going across the floor of Heraclitus so interpret ir to be younger. It looks like the central peak of Heraclitus is just below the wall. Cherrington says: Just south of Stofler is a strange, irregular enclosure with the outline of a bent capsule or bean. Its west inner walls are bright, and its predominantly dark interior is divided by a narrow bright longitudinal stripe through the middle. The rounded ends of the mysterious formation are craters. The larger north one is LICETUS, 47 by 50 miles across, 9800 feet deep, and of Class 1. The rest of the enclosure is HERACLITUS, the southwest end of which is a crater 31 miles in diameter and 9500 feet deep. The walls of the two craters are separated by a distance of 22 miles. While there are numerous small intruding depressions to complicate the picture, the remarkable and unexplained feature of the enclosure is the absence of portions of the walls and the normal surface material between the two craters which has been removed, as if by two scoops of a Gargantuan shovel, leaving a straight ridge between the cuts. Look again at the Licetus-Heraclitus freak later when the sun has illuminated more of the interior. This is parts of two images from the LAC. Licetus is on two different plates and because of the projection they use you can’t line them up easily so the join on the two images may not be exact. I also had to manually resize the lower image to make the scale roughly the same so there might be some error in there too. Cherrrington says Cuvier is a clas 1 crater but it looks old and smoothed off to me I could not locate Curtius. I saw something down there that looked like a huge dome.

Target Iridium 10 Flare Constellation Aqr Category Satellite Time 20061127.1759 EST Comments This is the first Iridium flare I have seen in a long while, the first satellite of any kind even. And I almost missed it. I had a five minute warning set in my PDA and when it went off I reset it for the time of the flare and forgot about it. I happened to look up at the Moon and there was a bright point of light there. Then the alarm went off. I think it was already dimming by the time I saw it. It was right below Skat, δ Aqr, Mag 3.27, although I couldn’t see the star. The flare was Mag -3.