Many amazing things happening in the skies these days. Besides the Transit of Venus, now only two days away, there’s a partial lunar eclipse tomorrow on June 4, 2012, which for us in the USA’s Central Time Zone occurs just about at sunrise, but we hope to observe part of it before the Moon sets, and if you’re west of us (for example, in a Pacific state such as Oregon), you will have an even better view of it than we will.
Here is the Moon this past week on May 28/29, only a few hours after the First Quarter Phase:
7:27 PM CDT 5-28-12 (00:27 UT 5-29-12), 25mm eyepiece (magnification 65x)
11:26 PM CDT 5-28-12 (4:26 UT 5-29-12), 25mm eyepiece with 2x Barlow (magnification 130x)
The northern end of the Moon, with sunrise just reaching the west rim of Plato, and the lunar Alpine Valley showing up quite well.
11:31 PM CDT 5-28-12 (4:31 UT 5-29-12), 17mm eyepiece with 2x Barlow (magnification 191x)
An interesting feature called the Straight Wall shows up well in the left center of this photo, which is centered in the south central portion of the Moon’s disk. The Straight Wall is about 80 miles or 130 kilometers long.
8″ f8 homebuilt reflector telescope with LG VX8360 cell phone camera. Click to enlarge.
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