I thought I'd ramble a bit about a new observing goal, and my first try at it. First, some preamble.

Although we live in Tucson, my wife Susan’s family has a reunion picnic every summer in Northern Ohio, Lake County east of Cleveland. She goes every summer; her mother is 95, there were 17 aunts and uncles in earlier times, and my wife has 55 first cousins. This is a big event. I usually don't go due to work, but now that I'm retired, no more excuses. I needed to go back just to prove I existed. Since we had a lot to do back there, we were planning on six weeks and driving, so I took my 10" SCT and several Mallicam instruments since some of the family members wanted a telescope experience. We were able to get a couple of public events together, but the weather was abominable. Here I was, thinking I'd avoid the monsoon season back home, byt we only had about five usable nights in five weeks. Two nights before we left, I saw that there was a Lunar-X prediction and I thought I'd try to see and image it, never having done so. The night was perfectly clear!

Then I checked on the predicted time for Lunar-X, the artifact of a pair of intersecting ridges on the moon that are only visible for a few hours in terminator each month, on the website

http://www.eyesonthe...oon/LunarX.aspx

and saw that on the last clear night we would have before leaving, Aug 21, it was scheduled for 20:30 EST, a good time. But I forgot to add Daylight Saving Time, and it was really going to begin its appearance at 9:30 PM, so I spent an hour in the cold and bugs with nothing happening. It was 49 F, when usually in August it would be low 70s, and I hadn’t brought a jacket! But I was seeing the X start to become visible at 9:30 PM, so I waited a bit more and took the final images (10" SCT at f/5, Mallimcam Xterminator, three frame average at 1/4000 sec) at 9:45 PM. It would have been much better at 10:45 PM, but I was freezing and the mosquitos were still active (they laughed at insect repellent; they used it for dessert) so I packed it up for good, loading the setup into the car for our departure in two days. Next try will be Sept. 20, around 7 PM Tucson time.

The final image I took is below, still too embedded in terminator. But now I have a quest; try to get a good image of the Lunar X and the Lunar V above it.