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Monday, February 13, 2017

 

My Images of the Occultation of Regulus (11 February, 2017)

Occultation of Regulus, showing Regulus getting closer to the Moon from 11:20:44 until 11:42:37 ACSDT, just before disappearance. I had to overexpose the Moon to see image Regulus clearly, and have overlain a normally exposed image of the Moon for reference. Click to embiggen.Animation of the frames in the previous panel, click to embiggen.
The Moon and Regulus at 11:43:20 I have zoomed in compared to the images above (click to embiggen as Regulus is harder to see due to the Moons light)The Moon and Regulus at 11:43:38 with Regulus just touching the Moon's surface. (click to embiggen as Regulus is harder to see due to the Moons light)

After a disappointing morning, where comet 45P was completely clouded out, I was resigned to the occulataion of Regulus being clouded out. With intermittent cloud coming over, I set up the 4" Newtonian with my Canon IXUS in infinity to infinity mode of a 20 mm eyepiece (rather than the 8" with time drive and CCD cam).

Despite the cloud I was able to get images of almost up to Regulus going behind the Moon (it was just touching) before the cloud came over and blocked my view. Given the cloud, I didn't hang around for egress but went to bed. While my recorded almost occulataion time was 11:43:38 and the predicted time was 11:42:40 my camera clock is not accurate enough for this kind of timing.

So a successful occultation campaign. Let's hope the May 4 occultation of Regulus is clear.

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Comments:
Very nice shots Ian. No chance for me here, clouded out at the time and still is.
David Jay - Astrophotography Western Australia
 
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