I got a call earlier today from Jim W. and was easily persuaded to head out to Binbrook, despite a nearly full moon. We had the place to ourselves, aside from some noisy raccoons and a few coyotes , and the moonlight gave a spectacular lustre to the lake and surrounding countryside. Jim mentioned that the CSC was forecasting a particularly steady night, and he was right. Comfortable temperatures, very little dew and deadly calm air promised a wonderful night of observing. So naturally I forgot my tube rings at home and couldn’t set up my scope. Alas! Jim, ever the gentleman, not only gave me a lift up to Binbrook, but now also offered to share his scope. We took in several nebulae (aided by a narrowband filter) a few good globulars (M15, M13 and M22) and several lovely open clusters, which did a good job of cutting through the moonlight. M11 proves to be outstanding under any observing conditions. I’m going to try observing it on the next cloudy night. Alas (again) even Jim’s 8″ couldn’t spot the Saturn Nebula. I guess you really do need a 74″ scope.

An early view of Jupiter showed an abundance of detail even though it was nearly on the horizon, and that was our first clue to just how good the seeing was. When we finally yielded our attention to the overwhelming brightness of the moon we were astounded by the amount of detail visible. The finest part of the evening was spent going over every bit of the lunar surface at high power. Jim set a new personal high by taking his scope up to 400x with the help of my 5mm Pentax eyepiece. This wonderful combination of objective and ocular elicited many oohs and ahhs (and a few other comments not suitable for a family website)as the moon showed nothing but a rock steady view and a landscape rich with detail. Terraced crater walls, rilles and ripples, and suspended crater rims hanging is the blackness of space over the terminator reminded us that our nearest neighbour is a much overlooked object. Even this most light polluted of nights gave us a wonderful observing experience just because that big, bright old moon was out there.

A little side bar on the DDO trip. Mike S. decribed the trip well and posted some wonderful pictures. He also offered Jackie much deserved thanks. I have to say that I had a wonderful time. The presentation was excellent, we had a chance to see a truly amazing instrument, and each of us undoubtedly came away with wonderful stories. I got Ian Shelton to recount to Mike J. and myself a firsthand account of the discovery of SN1987A, and Doug B. got the staff to let the two of us in to the library where we were able to peruse the books of Chant and others. And the view through the telescope was startlingly bright and richly colourful; both reminders of just how big a scope we were lucky enough to be looking through. Most of all though, there was lots of laughing and talking and enjoying the company of others, because as Michael S. so often reminds us, this really is a great astronomy club!