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

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.

Labels: astrophotography, Moon, Occultation, star, telescope