This is my first ever Moon-sketch, displaying craters Copernicus, Fauth and Gay-Lussac with some other sub-craters and domes not noted on the sketch. This is my actual sketch done at the eyepiece, no alterations were made after manually or digitally, other than resizing. It took about 45 minutes to finish, and I'm quite satisfied with it, althouth I've found that sketching the Moon is indeed very hard and very different from sketching deep space objects. Perhaps I should not finish Lunar sketches at the eyepiece but create only drafts with different markings for different shades and create the actual sketch in the warmth of the room. As an additional difficulty, the sky was 100% covered with a thin layer of cloud which made the image to be in constant change, only 1 or 2 stars was visible here and then. Moon phase was about 69%.

I was very fortunate that we had a clear night when this rare event occured, we had only a couple of such evenings this winter sofar. The 50% Moon was on the Southern side of the Pleiades. The star you may notice near the Moon was visible only for about 5-10 minutes, before it was covered by our little brother.

I was just cruising around the terminator of the Moon, testing the new cooling equipment on my OTA, when I found a very interesting mountain chain with some ruined crater at one end, near the crater Aristarchus which was right on the terminator. The view was so spectacular, that I decided to make a sketch. I found out that the large crater was Prinz, and the mountains attached are Montes Harbinger. I've sketched some additional minor craters nearby that have been cropped out from this image. A really unusual view, worth taking a peek when it's near the terminator!