Astroblog: Occultation of Antares

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Occultation of Antares - 18 February 2009

Going, going, going, almost gone. Antares disappears behind the Moon.

I had completely forgotten about the occultation of Antatres. It was only when I turned my binoculars to the Moon, after observing comet Lulin (a busy morning, Lulin, an occultation and Mars and Jupiter together) and saw Antares and the Moon close, did I realise that an occultation was on. The image sequence is from 6:10 am ACST to 6:26 ACST (by which time the sky was quite bright, coming close to the end of twilight). In the last image you can Just see Antares disappearing behind the Lunar limb.

All images were taken with my Canon IXUS and my 4" Newtonian, the first three with the 20 mm lens and the last with the 12 mm lens. Getting exposures right was a pain.

Labels: Moon, Occultation

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:14 am

Comments:

Well done Ian! Nicely captured. I was completely clouded out this morning. Hopefully the skies will clear for the weekend.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:16 pm

Added to the Astronomy Link List

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:02 pm

Ian, those are fantastic images of the Moon and you were able to capture the Lunar eclipse.

I am using a 10 inch Newtonian with a Canon 305D camera, but the field of view is very simular.

You know my email, so can you send me copies of your Lunar images?

I have tried to tell you about HDMI imaging, is when you take multiple exposures using different shutter speeds.

With software, images obtained with different exposures can be combined together and increase the dynamic range of the image.

Were you able to obtain any HDMI images?

Side note: The Festival software is now working on my computer and I have access to STEREO images.

Yes, the Earth and Moon are very visible!

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:42 am