Above~ The 14 Day Moon 14d 7h 44m, 9:06 pm.
Monday, April 4, 2023~ 8:40 – 10 pm.
Location~ Moosehorn Creek, NB
Sky Conditions~ Started partly cloudy, shifted to mainly clear.
Temp~ 3° 55%H
Moonrise~ 6:23 pm
Sunset~ 7:54 pm
Transit~ 12:04 am
Age of Moon~ 14d 6h 39m
Lunar brightness is now at 98.6%
The 14 Day Moon~
The Moon was almost full at this point, just a sliver left to go and very bright. Almost need two filters but it is a little too dark for my taste. Perhaps a acquiring a 3rd filter with less density would be helpful for stacking. The craters Krafft and Cardanus really popped out in the 10mm eyepiece.
Stopped to get an image at 9:06 pm just to have a record.
This was Day 2 of experimenting with vertigo and observing. I didn’t try to do too much, just monitor my reactions to movements and so on. Played around with some photography– tried out my Williams Optics 61 with camera mounted directly on a tripod to see what would happen. Moon was so bright it was difficult to attain any kind of focus–need to filter it I suppose.
It was then that I noticed a very large Moon dog (as opposed to a Sun dog, which are more common). I made note that we had a Special Weather Statement regarding freezing rain starting in about 24 hours.
Moon dog~
Moon dog over the Observatory and out in the field about 8:30 — 9 pm, April 4, 2023. Fisheye lens, it was incredible.
Shut it down 10 pm. Interesting evening.
Summary~
Moon at 14d 6h 39m at 73 magnification with filter (10mm)
Krafft and Cardanus
Kepler, Marius and Herodotus
All at 73 magnification with Moon filter.
Scope– ES Comet Hunter – 152mm f/4.8 731mm Maksutov-Newtonian
Mount– Celestron AVX
Eyepiece used– 10mm Ethos
Music~
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganni.
London Symphony Orchestra with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Andre Previn
Sources~
New Atlas of the Moon by Thierry Legault & Serge Brunier [2006]. Beautiful Firefly reference book with overlays, unfortunately out of print.
Sky and Telescope’s Field Map of the Moon~Mirror image laminated fold out map. I use this all the time, handy.
21st Century Atlas of the Moon~ by Charles A. Wood and Maurice J. S. Collins (2013). Excellent detail.
The PhotoPills App~ Exact time and age of the Lunar Cycle, sunset, twilight phase info for our gps location, etc. Great app.
50 Things to See on the Moon~ by John A. Read.
Moon Dogs~ Wiki page on Moon Dogs.
Sun Dogs~ Wiki page on Sun Dogs.
