Turn on your best vision
Some years ago, an observer found a better way of observing the Moon: Turn on a white light behind you when you observe between Quarter and Full phases. The light should be moderately bright (in the 60-watt range), but neither your eyes nor the eyepiece should be in direct view of the fixture.
The addition of white light suppresses the eyes’ tendency to dark adapt at night. Not dark adapting causes the eye to use normal daytime vision, which is of higher quality than dark-adapted night vision. So, you’ll see more detail because you’re viewing with a better part of your eye.
Work from a list
A great way to learn the Moon is to undertake an observing project. In the United States, the Astronomical League offers one such project, the Lunar Observing Club. You’ll learn a lot about our satellite as you work through a list of 100 lunar features. To receive a certificate, you must be a member of the league, either individually or through an astronomy club. For details about the club, see www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/lunar/lunar1.html.
Dig for the details
Of the 1,940 named lunar features, 1,545 are craters. Challenge yourself to see either how small a crater you can detect or how many you can observe in a given area. You’ll need a Moon map for this project.
For the second challenge, you can choose a lunar sea, but usually a large, flat bottomed crater works best. For example, if you search the large crater Plato, you’ll find four small craters on its floor. Lunar observers consider seeing these craters a test for a 6-inch telescope.
Shoot the Moon
How can a celestial object that’s so easy to photograph be so difficult to photograph well? The Moon is large and bright, and you can use any camera connected to any size telescope to image it. That’s the easy part.
But the Moon also contains vast areas of low contrast that have little color differential. Recording those regions so they look like what your eyes see is the hard part. Luckily, we live in the digital age. It costs nothing extra to take 200 images instead of just one. Examine them, delete what you don’t like, change one or more parameters (including the techniques you used to process the images) each time, and shoot some more as you perfect your techniques.