Just came back from an amazing observing session. Initially I wanted to try comet SWAN (though very little chance), I pointed my ETX125 to the position the comet should be at (to the right of Lambda Herculis), well, nothing...I looked more carefully and detected a suspicious object but couldn't tell whether it was the comet as it could also be distorted star image due to poor seeing...then the thunderstorm was rolling to that direction, failed to see my 11th comet...
Then I slewed the ETX to the moon and observed Plato for a while, surprisingly, this time I could see all the big four craterlets easily. I think it's due to different moon phases-those small craterlets are easier to view close to full moon like the lunar rays of Tycho, but one can't see the walls of them, again similar to other craters; when close to quarter moons, the craterlets are difficult to view due to less contrast to the plain floor of Plato but they are more crater like due to the casted shadows of their walls. Maybe Yang Beng should try viewing the craterlets close to quarter moons using his C5, to see whether the crater walls are visible.
Then, around 9pm, the biggest surprise of the night came when I was looking at Plato using 7mm Nagler at 270x, a SOUNDING BALLOON(the one for meteorological use) transited the moon, even Plato~~~!!!
The shape was clearly visible - the balloon, about 1 arcminute in diameter, even changing its shape because of wind; and the equipment hanging to the balloon~~~this reminds me of 1996 when I saw a sounding ballon with NAKED EYE (my eyesight was perfect then...), which appeared as a tiny little dot against the clouds, then I took out my 6cm refractor and examined it carefully, also close to 1 arcminute in diameter. Shortly after that, I saw a BIRD transit, very clear flying bird~~~So far I've seen moon transit of PLANE, SOUNDING BALLOON, BUGS, BAT and BIRDS, looking forward to my first satellite transit~~~
So WHAT KINDS OF MOON TRANSITS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN? This should be an interesting topic~~~
After the surprising transits, I was blessed with an moon occultation of the mag. 5.9 star 62 Piscium!!! Actually I found a star SUDDENLY appear to the edge of the view, then I kept track of it and finally at 9:57 it was occulted by the moon, the motion of the moon was so obvious when the star was getting closer, amazing~~~! Thanks to the wide FOV of TV Nagler~~~Besides, this is my first moon occultation of stars since 2001 January's total lunar eclipse, when the moon occulted Delta Gemini during totality, also an accidential ob, hehe
So overall, an amazing and memorable ob session despite the failure locating comet SWAN. Wish you folks good luck in your obs.
