What are you doing reading this post??

Too late for me now Dave on a Sunday night with work tomorrow

I sat inside last night looking at the crescent moon with a 25x100 binocs through the window with the inside lights on!
(At 25x the window doesn't distort much and there is plenty of lunar light.No need for dark adaptation looking at the moon through two 4 inch telescopes simultaneously!).
The Rupes Altai was reflecting sunlight directly at me and looked like a bright ragged gash running from Crater Tacitus to Crater Piccolomini.
You probably know about it already but there is a great photographic lunar atlas here:
www.lunarrepublic.com/atlas/

Just run the mouse over features to see the names.

Yep, clear skies till around 1am, but my was it mild. Very good transparency from here.

Thanks for the tip. Not a bad sky tonight either (in comparison to the totally opaque kind.) The Bresser Skylux Santa bought the family from Lidl finally had a decent clear sky shakedown. The view of M42, Pleides and even Saturn through my old 17mm Celestron Plossel was noticeably cleaner than through my 90mm F5.6 mak. Mars was still unimpressive as I expected for such a small scope and the barlow and 4mm eyepiece that came with the Bressler were fantastic for demonstrating chromatic aberration. But with decent eyepieces it wouldn't surprise me a bit if this were at the 70mm diffraction limit.

Now the bad news, just after experimenting with some surplus dichroic filters held in front of the lens to see if they helped with Mars and M42, I sat back in the rather damp observing chair and CRUNCH I crushed my eyeglass frames! AAAaargh, eyeglasses are so expensive in Ireland. I had a spare pair sitting around is, one of those huge owl eye lens things from the late 1980s. When I went back out to clean up I saw a crystal clear wide field view of the sky that was comparable to what I see with good contacts (except that the glasses correct for astigmatism better)

The eye exam showed that my eyesight had indeed drifted slightly towards what it was 20 years ago. But I was still shocked at how clear the old lenses were. Does the anti-reflection layer on modern eyeglasses cut down on light (unlike the multicoating layer on telescopes)? Has lens grinding quality dropped over the years or was the tiny crazes in the multicoating of my new glasses causing light scatter? WHatever the reason, if you see me out observing with hideous giant glasses from before the Celtic tiger. You'll know why. These are my astronomy glasses. (The frames most certainly _were_ more solid back then. )

I spent about an hour earlier on trying to find Mars with a 4mm EP and barlow2X. Just when i found it i knocked the tripod and lost it...........hadnt even focused in on it yet (it was just still a big old blur). I have now decided that hunting planets with a 4mm EP is more annoying then winning the Lotto and discovering you lost your ticket.

Then I tried a larger EP then a smaller and smaller til i got back to the 4mm.........no joy. I think just changing EP's is enough to throw the 4mm off target by about 50,000 miles.

:shock: :shock: :shock: