Astroblog: Occultation Pleiades 30-31 October 2023.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Occultation Pleiades 30-31 October 2023.


Morning sky on Tuesday, October 31 as seen from Adelaide at 00:40 ACDST, (click to embiggen). The moon is just about to cover the star Merope in the Pleiades. The inset is the binocular view of the moon at this time (click to embiggen).	Morning sky on Tuesday, October 31 as seen from Melbourne at 01:00 AEDST, (click to embiggen). The moon is just about to cover the star Merope in the Pleiades. The inset is the binocular view of the moon at this time (click to embiggen).	Evening sky on Monday, October 30 as seen from Perth at 23:00 AWST, (click to embiggen). The moon is just about to cover the star Atlas in the Pleiades. The inset is the binocular view of the moon at this time (click to embiggen).

On the late evening 30th/early morning 31st the just past Full Moon will pass over (occult) some bright stars in the iconic Pleiades cluster. From eastern states and SA the most stars will be covered. WA sees only one bright star covered and Darwin sees the Moon brush the edge of the cluster.

While potentially visible to the unaided eye, this is best seen with binoculars or a telescope. The bright Moon will wash out all but the brightest members of the Pleiades. Fortunately, for most of Australia at least one of the bright stars in the cluster, Merope (Mag 4.2) Alcyone (Mag 2.8) and Atlas (Mag. 3.6) are covered. Most of the east coast and SA gets all 3 covered.

Timings for the covering of Merope and Alcyone are give below (except for WA where Atlas is given), Atlas is covered not long after Alcyone for the east coast and SA.

	Merope DB	Merope RD	Alcyone DB	Alcyone RD
Adelaide ACDST	00:43	1:15	1:33	1:57
Brisbane AEST	00:30	1:27	1:24	2:11
Canberra AEDST	1:13	2:19	2:03	3:04
Darwin ACST	-	-	-	-
Hobart AEDST	1:05	2:15	1:52	2:59
Melbourne AEDST	1:07	2:09	1:55	2:53
Perth AWST (30th)	23:10*	23:44*	-	-
Sydney AEDST	1:17	2:24	2:07	3:09

DB - disappear bright limb, RD - reappear dark limb.

* In Perth the Moon misses Merope and Alcyone, but passes over the bight star Atlas instead on the late evening of the 30th.

It’s best to set up around 30 minutes before the occultation so you can get oriented in the sky and don’t miss the beginning while fussing with equipment.

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Here is the near-real time satellite view of the clouds (day and night) http://satview.bom.gov.au/

Labels: binoculars, Moon, Occultation, Pleiades, telescope