Astroblog: Close-up View of the Occultation of Saturn (May 14, 2014)

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Close-up View of the Occultation of Saturn (May 14, 2014)

Images of the occultation of Saturn (Wednesday 14 May, 2014) taking using my 8" Newtonian telescope, Don. Images acquired as video (60 seconds) with a Phillips ToUCam and Vega image acquisition, then processed with Registax 3 (click to embiggen). I almost missed ingress, because the webcam chip rotated the orientation of the image as seen through the eyepiece, and I was desperately searching for Saturn on the wrong side of the Moon!

I did catch it in time to get a nice sequence of the ingress, some of which are shown above and I made an animation (seen to the left).

I haven't processed all the images as it takes forever on the elderly laptop. Later on I will boot it up again and copy all the files over and do a smoother animation.

Completely missed egress as once again I forgot that the webcam reversed the Lunar orientation. By the time I had worked out which side Saturn should come out, I had missed it.

Despite prefect clear skies the atmospheric turbulence was something awful, so Saturn is not as crisp as I would like. The widefield images with the 4" scope are crisper.

Still, AWESOME occultation, next time I hope I can convince the kids to come out and watch (next time I'll be ready with egress maps so I know which side everything is on).

Labels: Moon, Occultation, Saturn

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:06 am

Comments:

Thanks for the posts Ian.
I watched it in my mini binoculars and also with my Gallileoscope held freehand. I could see the "ears" of Saturn before occultation.
I must make a Dobsonian with the kids so we can see the rings properly.

# posted by

JupiterIsBig : 5:06 am

Beautiful!

# posted by

Guillermo Abramson : 5:16 am

Bloody kids ey. I must say feeding the kids sounds even more challenging than camera assembly .. all a mystery to me. They'll appreciate it eventually. Meanwhile much appreciatioN from this ABC. Science Bulletin reader. I'll never forget The Saturn occultation night lying on the deck wrapped in couch blanky with my rock n roll noccies. Your blog is a great achievement thanks.... Kate in Forbes

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:48 pm