Now let's see, where was I?  Oh, yes, I was telling you about my tour of the moon.  We left off just after the first quarter.
On Day 8, I found the Straight Wall, but only after a false start.  At first, I was drawn to Alphonsus and Arzachel  At one spot, the walls of their craters seem to merge and give the appearance of a straight line.  I thought I had gone to my target right off the bat.  However, it didn't square with the map.  The real Straight Wall runs on about the same angle, but it's in a fairly smooth area of Mare Nubium.  Also, two distinctive craters flank the wall; Birt on the west, and Thebit on the east.  After another look, I found it for sure.  It is more obvious than I thought it would be. However, timing is everything.  Without the right sun angle and shadows, you're screwed.  You have one night to see it, and that's it.  For kicks, I went back a month later and found it again.  Like everything else in astronomy, it's very easy once you know when and where to look.  Fortuitously, the September issue of Sky & Telescope has a Lunar Notebook article that features this very area.  The author also refers to the Straight Wall as Huygen's Sword, and, sure enough, that's what it looks like.  But the thing that really caught my eye in the photos was a small rille just west of and paralleling the Straight Wall.  One end of the rille is right next to Birt.  I did not see it during my tour, but I was not looking for anything over there.  I need to go back.  It is said to be a challenging feature to see.  I'll check it out.

Moving on, there is a little strip of high ground separating Mare Nubium from Mare Cognitum.  If you follow that strip to the north, you come to an old, shallow crater named Fra Maura.  Apollo 14 landed just north of that crater.  Apollo 12 was not far away, but it was still on the dark side of the terminator.  Further to the north, Copernicus was just coming into view.  Only one wall of the crater was illuminated, and for the rest of the evening I kept coming back to watch the sunlight slowly creep down the crater wall and begin to spread over the floor.  Cool!  At high power it is quite a sight, but it is tough tracking  with a Dobsonian.  Seems as if the movement is always either too little or too much.  There is a sizable pile of ejecta on the east side of the crater. I called it The Elephant Poop.  There is a nice crater, Eratosthenes, at the western end of the Apennines Mts.  It was certainly worth a look.  Then I went further north and gazed at craters Archimedes and Plato.  I saw the Spitzbergen Mountains, located a short way from Archimedes.  It was a very nice night.

Lunar Day 9.  After last night I was so confident I decided to go with only the 13-inch telescope.  Let's go directly to the high powered big gun.  I am Man.  Hear my cannon roar.  I got lost immediately.  Didn't know where I was, where I was going, or what I was looking at.  There was a dull pop instead of a roar, so I set up the Astroscan without delay.  The moral: When you have a good routine established, don't change it.  Anyhow, the waxing gibbous moon was really getting bright.  Many features that were so prominent before are washed out and lack detail under the glare of the sun.  The big pile of Elephant Poop was barely noticeable at Copernicus.  The Straight Wall is nol onger visible.  I was able to find the approximate location of the Apollo 12 landing.  To do so I followed a row of three craters southwest from Copernicus and then edged eastward.  There are no conspicuous landmarks in the area, but I think I came pretty close.  While in the vicinity, I looked at the Ural and Riphaeus mountain ranges.  Next came the most stunning sight in the whole lunar exercise.  I looked in the northwest at the Jura Mountains and saw a huge dark arc.  It gave the illusion of the entrance to an enormous cave.  The Sinus Iridium, which looks like an old lava filled crater, was illuminated, but the shadow cast by the mountain ridge was extraordinary. Remember, nine days after the new moon.  Check it out.

Lunar Day 10.  That great sight from last night is no more.  With full sunlight on the Jura Mts. it has become just another routine crater.  I took another look at the Ural/Riphaeus/Harbinger Mountains just for the practice of finding them.  I noted that with the moon bathed in bright light, the rays of Tycho have come into full bloom.  I then caught a glimpse of the crater, Kepler, in the middle of Oceanus Procellarum.  Only a few days remain until the full moon.

Lunar Day 11.  I had a nice view of Kepler.  Aristarchus also showed up well.  There was a lot of shadow around Schroter's Valley, but I wasn't sure of just what I was looking at.  I could not differentiate between the valley and the hills.  I'll have to get in there again.

Clouds and rain wiped out the next few nights.  Full moon came and went, so if I want to view the last sliver of moon, it will have to wait until another time.  If I choose to go through the whole sequence again, I'm going to cover my big chart with clear plastic and use a grease pencil to mark the terminator each night.  Also, I can circle the features I want to look at and check them off as they are seen.  Neither my recollection nor my notes are quite good enough when I try to reconstruct the evening's activities.  I found myself guessing where the terminator was across the moon's surface.

Grease pencil or some kind of marker would make identification a lot easier and more precise.  After reading my notes, I know I have swayed back and forth across the terminator at times.  However, the exercise was great fun, and I may well do it again.  Next time, I'll concentrate on shadows in and around craters and drop the Apollo landing sites.

I was devastated to read that you might lose Crockett Park as an observing site.  Even though it is not as dark as it once was, it's certainly the place to handle a crowd.  People have a way of protecting their little fiefdoms, don't they?  Ironically, the park right up the road from me has recently been opened to the public.  Further, the county has no problem with setting up telescopes in the same area where I had been ejected some months ago. Finally, our little Skywatcher's club has a reasonably dark site within easy driving distance.