Telescope Reviews: Spring (Peeper??) Moon

I was just updating my weblog and realized this excerpt from one of the entries might amuse folks in the Lunie Bin. The full entry can be read by clicking the link in my signature line. (The observation was made April 12, '08.)

The crater Julius Caesar always makes me think of the mark of a thumb placed carelessly on a charcoal sketch. It has that kind of smeared quality. If what is believed of the geology of the region is in fact true, the flow of debris from the Imbrium impact is responsible for this effect, and for much of the character of the landscape around Julius Caesar. The crater, its neighbors, and all the features around it seem to have been scraped or stretched from northwest to south east. Julius Caesar has a worn and beaten look to it and its rim northwest and southeast of the crater’s center, barely rises from the surrounding landscape (an effect especially visible around the southeastern portion). It is easy to imaging a titanic debris flow running roughshod over the region. Tonight the thickish western rim of the crater (more a curved mound of rock than a crater rim, from the looks of it) played an interesting trick of the light. I’m speaking of the rim as it runs from J. Caesar A to J. Caesar B. Craterlet A was not especially prominent, but the main crater wall was well and brightly lit, describing a chubby curve that ended in a slightly broader portion containing shadow filled Cassini B and Cassini J. The interplay of light and shadow created a peculiar illusion, of a bright, curved body ending in a somewhat triangular head containing two black eyes (B and J). It took a moment for the animal shaped by these lights and shadows to swim in from childhood memories; I was looking at a tadpole! A giant tadpole on the Moon!

I wonder what the neighbors thought of the quiet laughter that floated out of my back yard tonight?

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Tom W.

SVP8 'She turned me into a 3-legged Newt' EQ
Ralph, the All-Purpose 102mm Refractor
Under the Desert Stars

Alcohol and calculus do not mix. Please don't drink and derive.