We're approaching the last quarter so the moon is rising late and not high until near sunrise so I got up about 7:00 and set up on the driveway to check out W Bond and the Gylden Valley. Both were fairly easy to find even though the sky was getting pretty bright by then. Gylden is a gouged out valley 'below' (in my eyepiece) crater Ptolemaeus and just to the left of crater Herschel. There was a prominent paw-like feature above and to the left of Gylden that I called 'two-toes' because of it's shape. There are many other valleys that were gouged out by ejecta from the Imbrium impact on the far side of the moon but I didn't notice them. The paw is Muller and the two toes are Muller A and Muller O. A 'thumb' is Hipparchus K. W Bond and companions Timaeus and Epigenes were easily visible. Craters A, B, and D were also visible. A has a prominent looking ridge running across it. Neighbor Jerry dropped by and stopped to see what was going on. It was also light enough that I was able to see the level I glued to the base of the 8" dob. The driveway is pretty level actually!
I was also out about 3:00 on 2/25 and saw L7, L8, L18, and L20. Rupes Altai is a nice cliff with a tall mountain. Mare Serenitatis has an interesting 'sea serpent' ridge. The serpent is actually Dorsa Smirnov. I guess that is the path one would take after drinking too much Smirnov. Seeing was pretty good but it clouded over and I had to come in. The roving watchman also came by in his golf cart and stopped. He wasn't curious enough to come over though. Guess he decided I wasn't trying to break in and steal something.
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