Crescents in April 2008, (UT+2)

5. April, Saturday, Crescent observation report

Date: 05. April 2008
Time: 12:35:00 (UT+2)
Location: Putzbrunn, Germany
Latitude: 48° 04' 41" N
Longitude: 11° 42' 43" E
Altitude: 520m
Weather: Many clouds, patches of clear blue sky, some haze
Moon: Altitude 42°, Azimut 240°
Sun: Altitude 50°, Azimut 230°

Details

Lunar crescent at 10.5° elongation.
Telescopic daylight observation, with precisely aligned / pointed telescope at 64x magnification.
The crescent was quite difficult to see, with very low contrast, despite using a red-color-filter, a bino-viewer, a black hood to block stray-light and the field-sweeping technique. The crescent could not be seen at 30x magnification. Moving clouds allowed only a short period of visiblity and left no time for imaging. Venus and mercury were very easy to see with the telescope and used for alignment and focusing.

6. April, Sunday, Evening twilight

The crescent could NOT be seen at this evening, due to clouds and haze. Also, as we arrived at a suitable observation location after sunset, racing after a big enough hole in the cloud-cover, we were not sure of the exact location of the crescent in the sky.

20:00, 8.2° Elongation, +14h Crescent
Azimut 283°, Height 6°, Width of the Crescent 10"
Crescent sets at 20:50 at azimut 292°

7. April, Evening twilight

The 38h old crescent was easily visible in the evening sky.
Some views through a 90/1300 refractor telescope, taken with a Canon 350D. The images show the green channel, only.

8s exposure to show the earthshine.


Short exposure, to show crescent details.

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