Last Friday night I was fortunate enough to have five minutes of partially clear skies to observe the Mt.Blanc/Alpine Valley sunrise lunar light ray (see http://www.lunar-occultations.com/rlo/rays/alpvalley.htm for further information) from my residence before the clouds that have been almost omnipresent this spring returned. I had been trying out my new 3-6mm Nagler zoom eyepiece on Jupiter and the moon with my 80mm f/5 Orion ShortTube achromatic refractor and 114mm f/7.9 Celestron C4.5 Newtonian off and on earlier that evening between sessions with the Virtual Lunar Atlas.

At approximately 11:05 p.m. EDT (3:05 UT 2003/6/7) I detected the ray. It appeared as a very thin and somewhat dim shaft of light just east of the terminator and southeast of Vallis Alpes (the Alpine Valley). I used 112x (8mm Tele Vue Radian) and 150x (Tele Vue Nagler zoom at 6m) to view the ray. Within five minutes the moon was awash with haze from the approaching cloud bank that soon brought an end to my casual lunar observing session.