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Tom Faller
member
Reged: 08/07/06
Posts: 51
Loc: Atlanta, GA, USA
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I was just outside under a completely clear sky looking at the Moon with an old Sears 3" telescope. Looking and looking, swapping eyepieces, going away to search for double stars then coming back and looking some more.
This isn't my favorite lunar phase. I'm using my smallest telescope, with lots of dust in the diagonal, and I've got floaters blobbing things up while I'm trying to see if that's really a couple of craters at the bottom of Plato.
The neighbor's got his porch light on, cars occasionally come by sweeping me with their headlights and I'm completely at peace, just going over the same craters and plains I've seen again and again.
I don't think anyone can really say they have one favorite feature on the moon. Well, maybe Buzz Aldrin could say "Mare Tranquillitatis" and get away with it, but for the rest of us mortals, there is just too much to look at, too many different hours and shades, tones and angles, textures and depths to keep any one at the top of a list.
I can remember about ten years ago when I thought I'd seen everything interesting there was to see on the moon and then I found that the telescope I'd been using, while big and powerful, had no subtlety, no real detail at all, and it had been deceiving me with bland, wavy images that weren't much better than looking at an old black and white TV. Better optics brought me back and I've been discovering the moon all over again. It's such a tiny patch of the sky and it never seems to be able to keep out of my trees for more than a few nights a month, but it's always worth gathering a few of those bounced photons.
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Tom Faller
80mm StellarVue Nighthawk refractor
127mm Orion Maksutov-Cassegrain
200mm homebuilt Dobsonian with Discovery optics
10x50 Carton Adlerblick Binoculars
12" homebuilt truss Dob with Discovery optics
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Carol L
Reged: 07/05/04
Posts: 5880
Loc: Tomahawk, WI 45N//89W
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"I don't think anyone can really say they have one favorite feature on the moon."
I can, Tom... the one in my fov at any given moment. 
You're absolutely right about not being able to pick a favorite lunar feature, but I do have a favorite lunar session. I watched Mons Rumker slowly emerge from the darkness as if it were being created before my eyes... absolutely breathtaking!!
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 *Step-by-Step Lunar Sketching*
CN Gallery
Photo Gallery
8"SCT ~ 120achro ~ 90Mak ~ 80ST ~ 11x70s ~ 22x100s
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Mare Nectaris
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 03/09/08
Posts: 1114
Loc: Toijala, Finland
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Agreed Tom and Carol,
to see the Moon is to spend a lifetime on it.
What can you pick of a lifetime - but sweet, sad, even sometimes strange memories born in various circumstances - as observing constitutes life - and life is observing.
Some things on the good old Moon were perhaps exposed to the observing eye only for a blink of an eye - and perhaps they never will be seen just quite like that again. Magnificient shadows and strangely lit mountain peaks - the very play of the Sunlight on the eternal details of the terminator, itself constantly changing in shape and ephemeris.
So maybe it all constitutes just of some tiny glimpses on a sight that - though seen in an instant - gets forever embedded into the mind. Yet one barely can share the image with anyone - for so many times there just are no words to describe what you experienced. And sometimes speaking of the experience just makes the thing go away. What if it wasn't there? Was it really so special - or am I just imagining things... yet once you get another look: there it is again. Something... and everything!
My current revolutions around the Sun on our Spaceship Earth just a few months ago hit 45, and my Lunar observations with anything but just naked eyes begun when I was 13. Ever since - every an occasion the good old Moon has reached the fov, everything else just melts away - sorrows, agendas for tomorrow.
There must be some atavistic, eternal beauty in this all - think about our ancestors wandering on the woods and prairies - or whatever landscapes - raising their eyes on the majeestetic light on the nightskies. What must have gone through their minds? Of course they had just their eyes - but the darkness must have been immense and the sensation of being under the stars and Moon as well true and appealing.
Only a little after week ago (see this thread http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/2314129/page/1/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1 ) I had a wonderous moment seeing the copper-coloured new moon just for a tiny glimpse of 3 minutes time. And I still recall the sight among the clouds - just for a while providing wonderous moment of awe and joy...
Well, some get it from the movies, some from the books. Some even - like myself - use all these, but the best kicks come from the Moon. It just is like that. Well. That's the Moon!
Be well all!
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Share - and you shall have it all
Timo Keski-Petäjä
CtheMoon
Observation shelter KuuMaja (MoonHut)
TAL 250K*Celestron C8-N*SkyWatcher Skymax 150 Pro*TAL1(Mizar)*EQ6 Pro SynScan*Celestron Advanced GT (CG-5 GOTO)*Baader Hyperion Clickstop Zoom 8-24*17 mm UWA-70*TeleVue BIG 2x Barlow*Celestron 2x Barlow Ultima SV Series
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