Telescope Reviews: Moon Washing

Last Sunday night after exactly forty cloudy days and forty cloudy nights I was once again greeted by clear skies. The seeing and transparency were fair and the temperature was a mild for this time of year 32°F (0°C).
It figured that the obnoxious orbiting orb of orogeny had to be intruding into my observing session so it became my primary target. A quick look at Jupiter was disappointing with little fleeting evidence of detail on five or so fuzzy cloud bands and four dancing moon disks all tinged by the colors of atmospheric refraction. So back to the lesser light of the firmament I ventured for my first in depth look in nearly twenty years.
The seeing did not favor the use of much magnification but I wanted to first try to get a few afocal photographs using most of my eyepieces. For some reason that turned out to be a dismal failure. I still do not know how my daughters can get a sharp picture of the moon while hand holding a camera to the eyepiece.
For visual observation filters are okay but I rarely use any of mine preferring instead to let my retina be blasted with copious amounts of photons. I just make sure that I only use one eye to observe with so that I can still navigate using my other eye. The few objects that I mention below should be visible in most telescopes. For these observations I was using a 25" reflector at 350x magnification as the moon rose from an elevation of about thirty degrees to seventy five degrees above the horizon.
Since I am not a dedicated lunar observer I just scan back and forth across the moon looking for points of interest.The part of the moon that passes for a terminator a day before full moon is located at and near the edge of the lunar disk itself providing one an opportunity to view the surface relief with a backdrop of empty space. The various lunar Maria themselves revealed subtle shades of gray with hints of blues and browns. Myriads of craters, the majority looking more like rings than craters, were seen over lapping mountainous regions and flat plains alike. The conspicuous craters Copernicus and Tycho have extensive ejecta scattered across the lunar surface appearing as giant rays of brighter material spanning a sizable portion of the moon. An optical illusion that always gets the best of me is that Tycho's rays look like gouges carved into the lunar surface. Moving from Tycho past Copernicus about fifty percent farther lies the very bright crater Aristarchus. To me it is the whitest spot that can be seen on the lunar surface. Moving closer to the moon's north pole Vallis Alpes is a prominent gap across the mountains that separate Mare Imbrium and Mare Frigoris. The last item that caught my attention was a crater in the northeast quadrant which at this phase of the moon's illumination is a mere bright ring with another smaller crater nearly at it's center and another slightly larger one on the rim. It looked like a clock with a center pin and one lone dot to mark an hour position. Looking through my copy of "New Atlas of the Moon" by Legault and Brunier it appears that that crater is Posidonius.
Now my one eye has been moon washed.

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Ted