May 19, 2021

One of the finest sights in amateur astronomy: the Moon, nearly halfway illuminated in above-average seeing.

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After a surprisingly cool spring (in the context of global warming), it's finally getting hot here in Washington, DC, and with summer comes better seeing. It promised to be above average on the night of the 18th. As Brood X cicadas burrowed out of the ground all around me, I walked over to my nearby church, refractor in hand. I might have been tempted to take the TEC 140 had that not been such a chore last time I stepped out, and anyway all I really wanted was a nice look at the setting Moon. The Takahashi was an easy choice. 

The Takahashi, ready to go on my DM-4 and Berlebach Uni tripod.

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It never ceases to amaze me, the endless varieties of turbulence that the atmosphere has to offer. After turning to the Moon, it was clear to me that if seeing was better than average, it would also preclude really detailed iPhone pictures. There was an undulating quality about the atmosphere. Parts of the moon would roll about, as if under waves lazily passing on their way to shore. While it was easy enough for me to see, with great clarity, what was underneath those waves, I knew that my phone would blur the slowly changing view. 

The view was absolutely razor-sharp through the eyepiece.

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Still, what a view it was! At low magnifications - 46x, with a Delos eyepiece - I couldn't notice the waviness of the atmosphere, and the detail was absolutely staggering. The Moon had a three-dimensional quality, and with almost zero false color I could just about make up the subtle shadings and - I thought - differences in color across the lunar surface. It's hard to describe, but the Moon looked likely a rich and fully realized world through the eyepiece - and I could almost pretend that I was somewhere in its orbit. Clearly visible earthshine on the otherwise unilluminated half of the Moon only added to the effect. 

Earthshine, I find, is one of the hardest things to capture with an iPhone - unless you're content to completely obscure the sunlit part of the Moon (as I have here).

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When I increased the magnification - up to 177x, sticking with Delos eyepieces - the view stayed sharp, but those remarkable differences in tint and hue were far less obvious, and turbulence detracted from that spacewalk effect. I took some pictures anyway, and what sticks out to me is that those different colorations are just about visible in them: a testament to the superb color correction of the FC-100DZ. 

After about 45 minutes, the rustling around me became impossible to ignore - was it rabbits, or something else? - and I packed up, content with yet another breathtaking expedition to the Moon, courtesy of the Takahashi.