Hello astronomy fans! I got out for 3 hours tonight. I went out to Matthew Myrah's where they were having a suprise 40th birthday party for him and his 70 year old father in law from Norway. Matthew's wife Katrina had her whole family over from Norway. It was clear skies so I set up my stuff at 6 p.m. but they were so busy I was ignored for the first hour and a half.
It couldn't have been better. I was scanning the Moon for crater Baco which is in pretty confusing territory. I don't think it is visible yet. Since that part of the Moon is confusing, I went back to crater Petavius and "crater-hopped" my way towards it, and on the way ran into Valles Rheita which is on my Lunar II list and hadn't bagged it yet. I got it tonight, though. It is a pretty cool feature, 500 kilometers long and Rukl describes it as the longest valley in the southeastern part of the Moon. It was in deep shadows at Lunar sunrise, so it was very striking.
The Moon and Venus were visible in the same binocular FOV. Jupiter showed all 4 Galilean moons, two on each side of the planet. Venus is still slightly gibbous. During the last hour and a half, the folks showed up just as the clouds rolled in. I went from clear pocket to pocket and showed them the Moon, Venus and Jupiter, and some of them got to see the Orion Nebula, the Perseus Double Cluster, Mars, the Pleadies and of course had to use my laser pointer for the little kids who just loved that. It was fun listening to little Teodor look through the scope and quizzing his Dad in Norwegian. He would ask questions, Nicholas would ask me to explain something and then would translate my answers back to Teodor in Norsk. Matthew's daughter Stine is really sharp on astronomy and asked questions that would grace any star party. It was AGNFA!