December 11, 2019

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A glorious full Moon tonight, in bitterly cold weather. While it was -1° C outside with a windchill of -4, it certainly felt a lot chillier on our observation deck. The TV 85 cooled down mercifully fast - even faster than my fingers - and I was able to observe some interesting details on an almost blindingly bright Moon before I started to worry about frostbite. 

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Over the past year, I steadily replaced my Celestron and Explore Scientific eyepieces with TeleVue equivalents, and some nights I really notice the difference. This was one of them. The eyepieces are just so crisp and clear; so easy on the eye. Of all the astronomy equipment I've purchased, my favorite might just be the TeleVue 3-6mm zoom eyepiece. It really gives up nothing but field of view to much more expensive, fixed-magnification eyepieces, with the possible exception of my Ethos. 

This setup weighs less than 20 pounds and packs up in just a few minutes. That sure helps when the weather gets cold.

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To me, there's always something a little miraculous about seeing the full Moon through a telescope, especially after you've become acquainted with its partly illuminated surface. Owing to shattered glass forged in the fires of cosmic bombardment, many features on the Moon reflect light directly back to its source, rather than off to the side. Much that is usually invisible on the lunar surface therefore pops into view when the Moon is full, including the glorious ray systems around some of the Moon's biggest craters. It's partly why it took "Selenographers" more than two centuries after the invention of the telescope to draft a passably accurate map of the Moon.

Luckily - or perhaps not - we now have cameras. My iPhone never quite captures what I see, but it's always nice to share something after a night outside.