Occultation Of Saturn By The Moon: 14th May, 2014.
Saturn is our celebrity in the sky at the moment.
First its opposition yesterday- Sunday 11th May (closest approach to Earth- big and bright!) and now on Wednesday 14th, we have our first night time occultation event of Saturn and the Moon in over 10 years, wow! So, with it being so close, and its rings which are so beautifully opened up at the moment, it should make for some knock out photography coming our way!
If you don't have a telescope, just look to the east in the times given in my facebook post below, and you will see a bright yellow "star" (Saturn) disappear behind the Moon and re-appear on the other side of the Moon. Kids will love this I'm sure of it!
I was wondering how much success I'd have using my Canon EOS-1100 camera using prime focus on my 10" Dobsonian? I'm thinking Saturn might be moving too fast?
Below is the fb post I popped on the IceInSpace fb page today.
Lots of great information in it regarding this event.
Quote:
Heads up Australia!
*Occultation of Saturn by the Moon- 14th May, 2014*
"Roughly speaking the event will be visible south of a line drawn from the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane to where the border of Western Australia and Northern Territory meet the Timor Sea. From north of this line the planet will appear very close to the moon. The brightness of the Moon will overwhelm Saturn's satellites with the exception of Titan which will be occulted approximately 5 to 11 minutes before the planet itself, depending on your location. From Western Australia the occultation begins just before the end of astronomical twilight."
Source: Astronomy 2014 Australia, page 38.
Astroblogger, Ian Musgrave gives tips & guides on viewing it, including a table listing the times for Australian capital cities. http://bit.ly/1nE5Su0
This is the second of three occultation events this year of Saturn for Australia, with the next one due on the 4th of August. It's been over 10 years since Australia saw an occultation of Saturn by the Moon, so, why so many this year after so long? It's all nicely explained in the ABC link here: http://ab.co/1iFjvE1
AND A CALL FOR HELP FOR THOSE PHOTOGRAPHING THIS EVENT:
Gianluca Masi, owner & operator of the Virtual Telescope is planning on streaming this event live for all to enjoy. Last month's solar eclipse proved to be a great success- some of our IceInspace members contributed their images in real time to the VT, shown via YouTube.
Everyone who helped out was credited in a report and a beautiful poster of the event was made: http://bit.ly/1nEbeoY
So after such amazing success with Aussie's who were willing to help out, Giana's looking at doing it again. Your help will be greatly appreciated by so many who can't see this event, and fun for those wanting to relive the event afterwards on YouTube.
Peter, that was absolutely brilliant! I really enjoyed that, thank you so much.
You explained everything so well, and I'm especially glad that you explained *why* the moon appears to move differently so as to cover Saturn- you're going to help so many people with this. It was a question I once had too.
I will post this on our fb page on either Tues or Wed with my reminder post.
"Wonky Astronomer" Funny! I love it!
Colin Legg from Perth shot a superb video of the last occultation back in February (in daylight hours!), which will give you a good idea of the relative speeds: http://vimeo.com/87319245
Julian, I remember that well & thank you for sharing, it was great to see it again. Colin was fortunate to be observing it from Western Australia so the sky was a tad darker when that event took place, lucky guy. This was the best capture I'd come across of this event. Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) also did a write up on his page about this image. A truly fantastic capture- especially in daytime.
Thanks for all the info. I'm setting up a few scopes to observe and image. Also, hope to show this event to the family. Weather forecast is good for Sydney, so fingers crossed.
All the best for clear skies Richard. I wish I had some young children with me to watch that event- I would love to see their reaction. It'd be a great family event that's for sure.
It's starting to look good here in Brisbane too- I was a bit worried up to yesterday .
It's starting to look good here in Brisbane too- I was a bit worried up to yesterday .
I'm sure hoping for reasonable viewing in Brisbane - if so, my father and I will have all of out telescopes out at his place (in a retirement village), and all of his neighbours are already anticipating a look!
Sorry Russell I can't help you as I do very simple photography- don't even know if I'll be able to get this event using prime focus thru my 10" dob, but will give it a go anyway. Hopefully someone will step in. It sounds like you've got a good plan anyway.
John, I'm actually feeling confident for clear skies tomorrow night. It's beautiful and clear out there at the moment and today wasn't too bad compared to the rest of the week. Here's hoping .
The hubby is really keen to see this too- he's been busy the whole night getting stuff ready to photograph it . Will be our first planetary piccy (done moon & sun etc), I don't care if its fuzzy etc as long as we get something of the event I will be one happy astro chick.
Julian, that's terrific what you're doing- you are going to make a lot of people happy in that retirement village. All the best for the night, great stuff!
Peter, that was absolutely brilliant! I really enjoyed that, thank you so much.
You explained everything so well, and I'm especially glad that you explained *why* the moon appears to move differently so as to cover Saturn
Thanks Suzy. Blue sky here in the Blue Mountains at 9.30am and 4% cloud forecast for tonight.
I'm going to try an SLR at the prime focus of my 12" dob - perhaps with a 2x barlow depending on the size and shakiness of the image.
Looking a bit iffy here for tonight - forecast is "Mostly clear" but the 48-hour forecast shows that as 40% cloud cover at 9pm. Ah well, beats rain or 100% cloud cover, just have to hope for a clear patch at the right time! All being well I'll give it a go with a webcam.
Looking forward to tonight if the clouds depart enough. Will use standard 8" f/4 scope with time-lapse centred on the moon for something a little different.
Looking forward to seeing how different it compares to the image I got from Occult v 4.1
I have written to Gianluca re contributing some images after he contacted me but stressed that I was not into AP and take photos holding the SLR to the eye piece. It's as low-tec as it gets but has yielded reasonable results in the past - at least for documentation purposes. The weather is pretty marginal here in Dunedin at the moment, so it may be a non-event for me.
Suzy, you should have no trouble imaging Saturn with your 10" dob and SLR. The dob provides so much light that exposure times should be able to be kept sufficiently short . The only other problem might be the dynamic range of the pair, so be sure to shoot RAW.
Then again, I'm really in no position to give advice since I don't even do prime focus
Funny! 
I love it!
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