Astroblog: A Cloudy Occultation of Zubenelgenubi, April 26, 2013

Saturday, April 27, 2013

A Cloudy Occultation of Zubenelgenubi, April 26, 2013


Alpha Librae (Zubenelgenubi) at 7:26 pm ACST, just before the serious clouds rolled in. Image taken with a Canon IXUS at 400 ASA, auto exposure timing , and infinity to infinity focussing thorough a 4" Newtonian and 25 mm eyepiece.	Emergence of Zubenelgenubi at 8:32 (well, it had emerged earlier, but this was my first image). You may need to embiggen the picture to see the faint blob near the bottom.

A clearer image of Zubenelgenubi as it pulls away from the Moon.	A slightly over exposed image showing Zubenelgenubi and it's partner, Alpha2 Librae (again, you may need to click to embiggen to see the faint star near the bottom right).

Wouldn't you believe it. Today's occultation was a mirror image of this mornings eclipse. A beautiful afternoon of blue sky, and as soon as it came time for Moonrise, cloud.

Also, we had folks over for dinner, and the boys had friends over too. so I wasn't paying as much attention as I could have, but ingress of Zubenelgenubi and its dimmer companion Alpha2 Librae was totaly clouded out for me. I did get a couple of shots before the cloud made things impossible.

The cloud had thinned to a reasonable level by the time of egress. Due to being distracted by dinner guests and visiting boys I wasn't paying as much attention to the egress orientation as I should have. So I spent a good 4 minytes or so photographing a bright peak on the edge of the Moon, under the impression I was imaging Zubenelgenubi.

I wasn't, frustratingly it was just off the edge of the frame.

Still I did get some good shots of it near the edge of the Moon, and one decent shot of bot Zubenelgenubi and Alpha2 Librae together. Not a bad evenings work (and had a great dinner with friends as well).

Labels: Moon, Occultation