My first clear night evening in the observatory since breaking my foot and having the bone pinned in November.  At long last the cast is off and the pain & swelling is now quite tolerable.  A gibbous moon on fine show tonight.  Our neighbouring tawny owls calling in the distance.  Beautiful!

After seeing my old friends on the lunar surface in the eyepiece, it was time to swap over to the high speed camera

Sunrise on Sinus Iridum

I am always drawn to this partially flooded crater and tonight it was putting on a fine show. I love the way the rim is illuminated while the floor is in shadow. The low sun angle really highlighted the rinkle ridges left as the lava solidified.  It was quite hard to balance the exposure so that the darkest shadows and brightest features came out without being too dark/bright.  Each image is the best 1,000 frames from 10,000. As Sinus Iridum fills the field of view in the C11 at f20, this is a mosaic put together in Microsoft ICE.

Moretus and the Malapert Massif

The south polar region on the mountain has a number of impressive mountain ranges.  The libration was just right to show the Malapert Massif, to the south of Moretus. This mountain range is one of the peaks of eternal sunshine that remain permanently illuminated.   It takes a while to identify these features using my Mond-Atlas but I think I got there in the end.    This is a two-panel mosaic, again using Microsoft ICE.