Lunatics Club

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"To bring together those who appreciate the night sky!"The TriState Astronomers is a group of amateur astronomers from the area surrounding Hagerstown, MD.
We began in 1985 and we enjoy sharing the ageless wonders of the night sky. About Us!

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Observer's Corner

18 Nov, 2013
moon phases

Selenology Today
Free online technical journal about the moon.

Hesiodus Sunrise Ray
Lunar sunrise and
sunset rays.

Lunar 100

Moon Map

Lunar Dome Catalogue

Lunar Observer's Toolkit. More...

Cloudy Nights Forum on Lunar Observing.More...Tutorial on Lunar Sketching. More...
Lunar Field AtlasConsolidated Lunar Atlas photos

Mare Orientale sketched at the eyepiece by Steve Berte.

Lunar Lunatic Rules:
1- You must be a member in good standing of the TriState Astronomers (personal guests are of course welcome to accompany you to TSA Lunar observing events).
2- You must observe all the items in the Lunar 100 list and record the
time and date on which you observed them.
3- Any observing sheet or format you choose is fine. There are links
to several sheets in my previous email. I have an Excel spreadsheet I can also distribute to anyone who wants it.
4- There is no time limit on completing the list.
5- Turn in your observing record to the Program Coordinator in order
to receive a TSA Lunar 100 Observer Certificate.
Additional Notes:
1- I strongly recommend you also record the seeing conditions and your personal notes of your observations. Additionally, you may want to annotate items you wish to return to at a later date as seeing
conditions may not enable you to observe all the detail you'd hoped to on a given night. It would be convenient if you have a method to
easily find items you want to return to in future months to finalize
your observations.
2- TSA will sponsor Lunar Observing sessions so stay tuned for notices.

The club will start by conducting lunar observations based on Charles
Wood's "Lunar 100" list. Note that the list is ordered by ascending
difficulty, so 1 is a piece of cake, and 100 is quite a challenge.
Wood built his list to expose observers to virtually every type of
feature on the surface of the moon (e.g., craters, mountains, rilles,
domes, mare, etc.) See this link for the list:
http://www.astrospider.com/Lunar100list.htm

Chuck Wood writes the monthly lunar observing article for Sky &
Telescope. Here's a link to an article he wrote for S&T about the
Lunar 100.
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeed81b/sitebuildercontent/
sitebuilderfiles/lunar100log.pdf

Here's a link to a PDF that is an observing log including the best
lunation days to see each object.
http://www.eastvalleyastronomy.org/downloads/OTL100.pdf

A list of Lunar Resources for your reference.
Download Observing Log

Observing Awards