Friday, May 05, 2017
A Very Nice Occultation of Regulus (4 May 2017)
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| Regulus shortly before occultation. 7:09 pm ACST. Stack of 10 x 1/60 second images, 400 ASA, Canon IXUS. Stacked in Registax. Click to embiggen. | Regulus disappearing at 7:24 pm ACST. Animation of 5 x 1/80 second images, 400 ASA, Canon IXUS. Click to embiggen. |
After days of cloud tonight was virtually cloud free (at first) so I set up Don the 8" Newtonian in between preparing dinner ready for the occultation of Regulus. Just after 7:00 I fired off some test shots ... then the battey ran out. It wasn't until just before the occulation that I got the amera back on again, and managed to get Rgulus just as it winked out.
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| Regulus reappearing (screen capture from video), Regulus indicated by bracket). 8:38:26 pm ACST, Thin clouds interfering. Click to embiggen. | Regulus shortly after occultation. 8:51 pm ACST. Stack of 10 x 1/120 second images, 400 ASA, Canon IXUS. Thin cloud interfering. Stacked in Registax. Click to embiggen. |
After a longer recharge I set the camera up again (infinity-infinity imaging through a 20 mm Plossly lens on the 8"). There was a lot of thin cloud about but the Moon was still fairly clear. This time I tried something different and instead of taking static shots ran a video form my Canon IXUS. It worked pretty well excet a) going to video more undid the focus and b) the video is in quick time MOV format which I can't edit with any of my set-up.
Still, I got very nice, if slightly out of focus, video of Regulus coming out from behind the Moon, tming was pretty good too. Had to take a screen shot to show the emergence as I can't extract single frames from the video (or crop or resize or anything).
A very nice night. Compare these shots with the occultation of Regulus back in February.
Labels: astrophotography, Moon, Occultation, telescope
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:33 am 
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Excellent effort Ian, I was doing the same at Melbourne Science works, for a small crowd.
Got the wink out but missed the exit, by half a moon lenght.
Forgot about telescope inversion, a bit embarrassing....!
kind regards, Alan
Got the wink out but missed the exit, by half a moon lenght.
Forgot about telescope inversion, a bit embarrassing....!
kind regards, Alan
G'Day Alan
Don't be embarrassed, I had to double check on Stellarium because I was convinced it was exiting much further down.
Being with a crowd at Science Works must have been a blast!
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Don't be embarrassed, I had to double check on Stellarium because I was convinced it was exiting much further down.
Being with a crowd at Science Works must have been a blast!
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