29 December 2025

 

Bulliardis and area . North is up and slightly to the right in this sketch. This is the view through the eyepiece, so East is actually to the left. The sketch was made with pencil on white paper in a sketchbook, photographed, and then colors inverted using GIMP.

I was able to get out and observe for about an hour, The Moon is 9.9 days old, and about 75% illuminated. No plan other than to find some interesting areas and then identify them. I started at the southern end of the terminator and slowly worked my way north. I was able to identify several features using Sky and Telescope's Mirror Image Field Map of The Moon. this map is really handy. it is large and waterproof, but folds into quadrants. The mirror image matches the view through the eyepiece for my Celestron 8SE with a diagonal.

I started out using the 32mm Plossl eyepiece, moved to the 17mm and finally 13mm. The craters I identified were Clavius, Blancanus, Scheiner, Klaproth, Moretus,  Montanari, and Wilhelm. I also identified the Congo Mountains.

I moved further north to Bulliardis and the region around it. Bulliardis has a diameter of about 60km and a height of 3510m. Immediately to the NW of Bulliardis were two very bright white circles on either side of a smaller crater.  The bright rings were caused by the sunlight just hitting the rims of two craters. I made a very striking sight. I was able to identify one of the bright rings as the crater Lubiniezky. The other bright ring crater is and the crater between the two are not named on the S&T map. Neither are the two small craters just south of Bulliardis. Looking at the Hypertextual Moon Atlas for that area, the second bright ring is the very broken rim of the crater Lubiniezky E, and the crater between them is Lubiniezky A.

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