PM Sun. June 5th - AM Mon. June 6th, 2011 Observing Notes 1

  (Catch-Up Notes) This night started out clear with a little haze. The temperature was in the high 70's F at the start of the night and calm winds were letting the humidity build up. The Moon was a thin Waxing Crescent about 4.2 days past New Moon. I did some lunar observing through the eyepiece and then tried to take some photos of it in my usual primitive way; holding my little Nikon Coolpix digital camera up to the eyepiece and hoping that some of the shots I took caught the image in focus while the air was steady.

  This photo probably turned out the best. It was taken at 10:03PM June 5 (2:03 UT June 6). The sunrise line on the Moon was at about 34.03 degrees E. North is down and south is up. The most obvious of the lunar "seas" are Mare Fecunditatis top and near the center, and the smaller, oval-looking Mare Crisium closer to the limb and a little below the center. The small craters in Mare Crisium still looked like dark spots because their floors were in shadow. The pair of big craters near the bottom of the picture are Atlas to the left and Hercules to the right. Near the top of the crescent the lunar highlands are really showy with all the craters and plateaus casting shadows on each other.