A Curious Sight on the Moon

The evening of March 7^th, the last evening with no clouds, I imaged portions of the moon. As usual for me, I “ran the terminator”, meaning imaging along the day/night line. Plus a little extra this time. Needing something to do while the skies are so cloudy , I'm still processing the images. The first one processed, however, has something I don't remember seeing, so I'm trying to find out more about it. It's one of those things that's certainly nothing, but I'm just curious. I'm also asking members of the Atlanta Astronomy Club to look at the images to see if anyone recognizes it. First, the processed image.

  

Original processed image, but substantially downsized.

And now, the curious feature marked.

Feature is slanted lines inside circle. Ray from Tycho is vertical line.

The “feature”, for lack of a better word, seems to be a series of light lines at an angle to one of the rays of ejecta from the crater Tycho. In tracking this down, I've been to the lunar quickmap

https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu

to see if any of the layers might shed some light on the feature, but nothing seems to have helped. I feel fairly confident that it is not a surface feature like a crater rim or wrinkle ridge, so I'm thinking it might be ejecta from another crater, maybe??? Who knows? Maybe somebody. IF, and that's a big if, it is ejecta, which crater did it come from?

As Finished As I Can Get … Take 2

Well, somewhat against my better judgment, which isn't saying much, I found a way to get all but one of what turned out to be the remaining seven Herschel objects. Among other things, I found out that one abject that I thought I didn't have, I actually did as a Messier object; M110 in fact. So, my missing 8 turned to 7 with that finding. The method I used to get the remaining 6 (of 7) objects was to shove the focuser further up on the focal reducer. Basically, the problem is that the camera just doesn't quite fit between the back of the optical tube and the top of the base. It would be similar to having a swing set and the swing hitting the ground when you try to swing. I gained enough room to get closer to the north celestial pole, and doing so meant that the camera was within about 1/32 of an inch of hitting the base. But, it didn't. Now I have only NGC6217 left to image to complete the Herschel 400 list. Unfortunately, although it's circumpolar, it's below the tree line. My next goal is to find out when I might have a chance of success. For now, that's a job for another day. I'll leave you with one of the 6 I got last night, NGC40, which is a nebula with strong Ha emission, apparently, since it shows up so strongly in the red.

NGC 40, The Bow Tie Nebula (if it were green, I would call it the Green Lantern Nebula)

As Finished As I Can Get

Of the Herschel 400 list, that is. On the night of the 21^st, I imaged about 12 open clusters, a planetary nebula or 2 and a galaxy. That officially completed all of the objects I can photograph. That would end up being a total of 391 objects. Why can't I get the remaining 9? The scope won't point that far north with the camera attached. Well, mostly it won't. If I try to maintain the correct spacing of the camera to the focal reducer, there is not enough room between the fork arms to let the camera swing between the fork arms. However, IF I cheat a little and push the camera a little closer to the reducer, I might be able to get a few more. NGC2655 and NGC6217 are the worst offenders at a declinations over 78 degrees. I have limited the scope to 72 degrees declination to prevent damage, so it will be a tight fit. I will need to be at the scope, with all lights on, watching the swing to be sure the camera doesn't hit anything. OR, I could buy a new scope!!! Yeah, I like that idea! New mount actually. I currently eyeing a Losmandy G11G or G811G. I guess we'll just have to see what the futue holds.

I usually put an image in with my posts, and, since galaxies are usually more photogenic, I'll include NGC2613. Not really the greatest galaxy, but certainly good enough. I hope you enjoy.

NGC2613

Lunar image(s) from December 6, 2019

It seems that I have imaged, and identified, most of the “major” lunar features, so I thought it might be interesting to look for some of the less looked at features. However, he said chuckling, when you go for the minor stuff, it appears you also get most of the major stuff. The field of view is just too great, I suppose.

Anyway, I took 4 images where the primary target was something minor. One such image is below.

Anaxagoras and Pico area of moon just about first quarter

I've identified two less viewed features here: the crater Anaxagoras, which is about 31 miles in diameter, and the “circular formation” that, as far as I can tell, is identified as Pico, perhaps Pico C. My favorite lunar program, Virtual Moon Atlas, doesn't make identification easy, so I'm making something of a guess here with Pico.

I also thought it would be a good excuse to find out what I could about the “minor” features. And what I found is......there ain't much out there! Virtual Moon Atlas had about as much info as could be found. Maybe I should qualify statement; I could find some very specific geological information that I'm not equipped to understand, so was not as helpful in making a good, generally informational description. There is one geophysicist in the family that could interpret, but that will probably need to wait for a later time. The “circular formation known as Pico” is interesting because it just looks like a crater filled in with lava. However, the mountain near the 7 o'clock position is Mount Pico. Why would there be what appears to be several mountains on the rim? Inquiring minds would like to know.... and so would I. This image also shows what appears to be “folds” (perhaps wrinkle ridges?) in the mare. They seem to show up more clearly in this set of images than perhaps any I have taken. Unfortunately, the conversion and downsizing of the image has removed much of the clarity.

The other images have similar interesting formations, as well as some major ones, just like this image. And, information is just about as hard to come by.

Once In A Life Time Event for Me

 Why Once in a Life Time? Next one occurs in 2049. I won't be around for it!

Small black dot just below and right of center is Mercury

As it so happens, there were also two small prominences on the sun that day as well. One was near the 9 O'clock position (the larger one), and one around the 2:30 position. I took quick pictures of them as well.

Larger Prominence on "left" of sum (about 9 o'clock position)

Snall Prominence of "right" of sun

Quick Entry M15

October 17^th I finally got the scope back out and tried some imaging again. Biggest hurdle this time was the new astronomy computer; basically getting it set up and working. I think I have most of the programs loaded and most of the bugs worked out, so it was time to put it to the test. As far as the computer goes, I think it worked fine. As far as the scope goes, well, it needs some work, namely it needs the PEC retrained after replacing the scope back up battery. At any rate, the target was M15, a nice globular cluster.

M15

Lucy Becomes More Terrestrial

And, Lucy became Percy who is now Ruby. Got that? I'm not going to change the name of the Blog, but the focus will change to our travels. And since we will be traveling more, I won't be in the observatory. So, fewer, if any astronomy entries. You can say Thank You.

After the trade of Percy for Ruby, we noticed that we had put only 5000 miles on Percy in about 2 ¾ years. The travels had been mostly to Red Bay Alabama for some work on him or to our NOMADS projects. Percy was a wonderful motorhome for that type of “stay and work” traveling. He was really a home on wheels. Ruby is different. Since my illness, we are no longer able to work NOMADS projects, but we still have the urge to “go, see, do”, as one of the members of the Lazy Daze forum puts it. Ruby is VERY compact, but easy to drive. Percy was more of a “staymobile”; Ruby is a “gomobile”. After about 2 ½ weeks of preliminary work, putting things like the surge protector on, we have taken her out for the maiden voyage. On the first trip, we have already put over 1000 miles on her, so she is living up to the purpose for which we obtained her.

The first few nights we stayed in her, we stayed in the back yard. We needed to see how things work, and didn't want any really bad surprises on the road. Actually, there was one bad surprise; a nail in the rear passenger tire. We took Ruby to a local tire shop for repair, which is now done only as an “internal patch”. This causes us some concern as there is NO spare tire. Dodge gives you a 12v tire pump and a can of “Fix A Flat”. Not really confidence building, if you catch my drift. We are paranoid about checking tire pressures now, which is probably a good thing, since that tire appears to have a slow leak, as compared to the driver side rear tire. Oh, bother. The other major glitch is an intermittent awning extension. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If that is the only issue, then I think we will have a pretty good motorhome. Most times, the post-delivery punch list is quite long. Sometimes, after reading other blogs about other campers, I think the factory puts most of the parts there and the poor dealer has the job of making it all work.

The first night actually camping was done at Red Top Mountain, a Georgia State Park, near Marietta.

At Red Top Mountain State Park, Georgia

Wanna guess why we named her Ruby?

Following that, we met with some close friends to caravan to Paducah, KY and a trip the the National Quilt Museum. JW and MR are quilters, so they were having a good time. JR and I are not quilters, but did find some good barbecue at the show. I will say that there were some amazing quilts to be seen though.

Aren't these amazing?

Near Paducah, there is a town call Metropolis, in Indiana. Any of you older than about 30 might have an association with that name. Well, the town has capitalized on that association.

Who knew I looked so good in blue tights?

After Paducah, we parted ways with JR and MJ, with JR/MJ heading to the NOMADS Annual Meeting in Illinois and J and K heading not far away to the Land Between the Lakes park. It is a National Recreation Area. We stayed there several days to relax, but found some things to see while there.

Yep, that's a lake. And we're on the land.There's another lake behind us, too!

For outdoor activities, we when to the 1850s Homestead, which is a functioning farm. Docents showed what life was like at that time, including woodworking, blacksmithing, quilting, and growing crops and farm animals for food. Apparently they used to slaughter the hogs, there to get their pork, but, times being what they are, the hogs are now slaughtered elsewhere and the carcasses returned for butchering and smoking/salting for preservation, etc.

They also had information on the use of plants in the area, like simple strawberries, and how they used all of the plant.

They preserved green beans by stringing them....

All my life I have heard of “string beans”, which I always thought was a type of green bean. I wonder now if it referred to a variety of green bean that was particularly good at being strung for preservation. When I get internet again, that's something to check on.

Following LBL, we traveled to the Mammoth Cave area of KY. Not our first National Park by any stretch of the imagination, but the first one where we had a National Park Passport, which we promptly stamped for Mammoth Cave.

On the steps in front of "Frozen Niagara"

As you would expect, they had information on the formation of the cave and the area. I would have assumed that the reference to “mammoth” would be to a large “room” in the cave. Not so. The mammoth refers to the huge length of the tunnels, currently about 420 miles or so. All of this in an area (surface area, that is) of about 7 miles by 9 miles or 63 miles square. So far, no one has found the end of the tunnel system, and people have been actively surveying since at least the 1950s or so.

Well, that's enough for now. It's been interesting to see how much we have come to rely on the internet. When we don't have it, it's easy to become bored, especially since we didn't bring enough to do otherwise (not a lot of room). That's OK for now; this is a different type of traveling for us, and we need to learn how to do it. That will take some time and a few false starts, but we'll get there.