Aug. 4: lunar occultation of Saturn

[deanm]

The best one this year: catch it!

Dean

[AstralTraveller]

If you find the moon too bright do not use a filter to dim it - you won't see Saturn. How do I know? :(

[johnnyjetski]

Saturn was very difficult to see last time, only showed up on a couple of images I took in a last minute attempt, as I had given up looking for it, but this time will be much better I think.

John

[AstroJunk]

oops!

[Matt Wastell]

It will be more exciting seeing Saturn disappear behind the dark limb. Looking forward to having a clear sky?!

[Vermin]

We miss out on the occultation in Hobart. Nice conjuction though.

[AstralTraveller]

Not quite what I said. My wife was at the other scope saying how great the re-appearance looked while I was scanning the limb wondering what the ...was happening.

[OzStarGazer]

:( Not in front of my balcony or visible from the beach... I know where I could go to see it but it is not the best place to be at about 10pm all on my own with a telescope... We will see what happens...

[mikerr]

Running a simulation on Stellarium, this seems start about 2100. Is that correct?

Michael

[deanm]

Ian Musgrave has the details:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/01/29/3932747.htm

Dean

[mikerr]

Thanks Dean :thumbsup:

Michael.

[mithrandir]

Michael, you are close enough to me that my figures should be OK. They come from a simulation in Cartes du Ciel.

Titan disappears behind the dark limb at about 21:17. Saturn's rings start to disappear at 21:21 and the last of the rings at 21:23. The last of the moons are gone about a minute later.

Emergence starts on the bright limb at about 22:13 with Titan and the first bit of rings appearing at almost the same time. The closest large crater you could use as a target appears to be Janssen. The last of the moons are back by about 22:18.

[AstroJunk]

For Brisbane observers here are the exact timings (attached).

Check out the superb and free Lunar Occultation Workbench from the Dutch Occultation Association: http://www.doa-site.nl/ if you are interested in watching more objects disappear behind the dark side of the moon!

[JJDOBBER79]

Bummer about the filter David. Hey, that's got me thinking. Do others plan to use a filter? If so, which one?. I'm wondering if a blue or green filter will darken the moon slightly and still allow views of Saturn. I have 12 inches of aperture. The moon blinds me:sadeyes:

[doppler]

I think good tracking and high magnification should keep the moons brightness at a reasonable level. At least it is only a quarter moon this time.

[rustigsmed]

here's a vid of the last one at high magnification during the ingress

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80336656@N07/14241997333/

next time i'd have less moon in the frame ....

[kkara4]

hopefully its not cloudy again like the last occultation in May, but not looking promising for BNE :(

[mikerr]

Andrew, please don't think me rude, I only just saw the extra details you provided for me. Thanks very much:thumbsup:

Skippy Sky is looking pretty good for tonight so far.

Michael.

[kkara4]

brisbane cloud cover near 100% atm where I am :(. forecast to clear a bit though, fingers and telescope legs crossed!

[alphamone]

Weather here in Canberra is fine albeit cold (and some atmospheric distortion).

Gonna try saving my video footage to the hard drive rather than doing a direct upload stream to YouTube like I did last time. It showed up ok, it just lowered the image quality of my already low end scope camera more apparent. Though I will do a test on Saturn alone before the actual occultation. I just hope that my settings are still saved, it took way too much fiddling around to get all the various settings just right.

[rustigsmed]

considering time lapse of the event rather than randomly going between pics and video like I did last time. blue skies out there at the moment so fingers are crossed. although the fov I have probably won't get the entire moon in. decisions.

[lazjen]

Still not looking great here, but I can see some clear skies.

Russell: I'd concentrate on Saturn as the main photo target and have the pics be the moon "affecting" it, especially if you don't have full moon fov.

[rustigsmed]

thanks - I think that's probably the go. its a lot of photos though!

[kkara4]

the sky has magically cleared here, just some high altitude here and there :D.

Dinner time while moon crosses the meridian, then imaging time :)

[shelltree]

It's almost time!!! :D Clouds have disappeared for now, fingers crossed they stay away!

[Doogs38]

Bummer - still very clouded here ATM :-///

[N1]

2 little stars to the east of the moon about to be occulted :thumbsup:(as seen from Tahmoor)
Nice entree

[rustigsmed]

Ac/dc converter just blew .. Handy:(

[kkara4]

i have a nasty feeling dew is going to be a big issue soon :(

[N1]

WINK! How cool is that.
Yep dew building up here too.

[daine042]

Not looking good here in singleton nsw but if i pack everything up it will clear (sorry about the dodgy image of a camera screen)

[N1]

That cloud should still permit some views.

[lacad01]

Ah yes, playing the age old game of cat & mouse with the @#$%en clouds :mad2:

[mithrandir]

Don't think dew will be much of a problem here. The antarctic winds should keep it at bay.

[multiweb]

Still looking good here in hoxton park. Getting closer.

[daine042]

Can only just make out saturn through the cloud i have a 6" refractor 750mm fl and a 2x barlow was planning to get a few images off but its not looking good

[lazjen]

Currently I've got half a sky clear, near the moon. Fingers crossed it remains that way.

[N1]

Moon & Saturn now nicely placed in the 68deg ES 24mm on the 10" dob. Looking good as it is already.

Will switch to 16mm when closer.
9mm won't look as pleasant due to the pretty average seeing.

[kkara4]

what power at the moment with your 24mm Mirko?

[N1]

About 45
Sorry that should read 28mm.

[kkara4]

cheers Nirko. Time to go outside and begin imaging then :P

[algwat]

got saturn, I wonder how big that moon thingy will be?:)

[sn1987a]

Just watched Saturn disappear behind the moon in my 18" f4.2 17mm Ethos and Paracorr. Quite a sight I nearly missed it as I forgot until I glanced up at Saturn. Thank goodness for ServoCat and ArgoNavis.:D

Beautiful clear night here in Perth

[AG Hybrid]

Well. Its overcast with thick low clouds here in Sydney at the moment. There are some sucker holes but the stars that appear - even at zenith are twinkling like crazy. Seeing is going to be rubbish me thinks. Hope someone can get some decent pictures.

[lazjen]

Saturn's going to be a speck in my photos, but I should have most/all the moon in them. Already together in my scope fov, so look's good. :)

[swannies1983]

Perfect night in Adelaide for it!

[Doogs38]

Hooray ... clouds have thinned and I can now see Saturn :-) Dob is setup & I'm waiting for the show to commence :thumbsup:

Edit @ 2054 - all the clouds miraculously disappeared with nary a moment to spare!!! Terrific :-)

[N1]

Well, started imaging too. :P

Naked eye view, slightly cropped. 50mm on DSLR.

[glend]

Great you have sent them down here because they just rolled in.:P

[algwat]

Almost here , from Melbourne west. rgds Alan

[Doogs38]

Bugger Glen - my bad :shrug::P

[lazjen]

Wow, that was great. One gobbled up Saturn - excellent sight! :)

[N1]

Ingress of Titan observed at 21:16
Ingress of Saturn observed at 21.22
:D:thumbsup:

[Doogs38]

'Twas very cool indeed ... Pic compliments of good old iPhone-ography :-))

[multiweb]

All done now. It was great. Waiting for the other side. Gear behaved. Plenty of pics and a time lapse. Happy camper. :)

[Rob_K]

Wow, how good was that! So much better actually watching it than trying to photograph it! ;) The dark half of the First Quarter Moon was brighter than the background sky so you could see it approaching Saturn. Saturn's moon Titan led the way, winking out on the limb a couple of minutes before Saturn was slowly cut off by the advancing disk. :D

Cheers -

[mozzie]

Wow! Very nice ..slight cloud here on mid north coast
Hoping reappearance will be spectacular but a little bright...have semi-apo filters in this slightly darkens that moon..

[algwat]

a small animgif of the first part....oops to big for here(4mb)..
I'll find another place for it and link to it... regards, alan

[rrussell1962]

Excellent! used my new Vixen LVW 13mm which arrived today in the post. kkara4 - how did the imaging go from 1km up the road?

[lazjen]

I just missed recording the start of the disappearance, but I've got most of it. Have to work out how to make it a reasonable size.

I saw, but didn't get the actual recording of Titan disappearing too (got it close and after, but not the actual bit :( ).

[malau]

Trying to taking timelapse photo. Here is one of the pic....

[doug mc]

Sky cleared just before disapearance, could see dark limb with Saturn clear and sharp. Tamborine Mountain, 60km south of Brisbane. :)

[AG Hybrid]

It cleared up and I got some pictures with my dirt cheap usb camera yay!

[alphamone]

Grr, the program decided to save my 15fps video as 14fps in the video file. Not that it really matters, as the camera's resolution is only just high enough to to resolve Saturn from its rings when viewed though a Barlow lens on my telescope.

At lest I got a nice direct viewing of Saturn reappearing from behind the moon.

[Matt Wastell]

Hi all
Managed some prime focus DMK51 with the 60 Tak.
7.40 to about 9.20pm Brisbane time.
Great visually!

[MortonH]

Clouds cleared just in time then stayed clear for the whole thing. Finally - an astro event not clouded out in Sydney!!! :party:

Just visual for me. Stellarvue 80ED on the balcony with a nice cup of tea.

[MortonH]

Nice sequence, Matt.

When I opened it on my tablet I saw nothing... until I resized it!

[BeanBear]

Hi everyone,

Just getting back into observing after a long break.

I've been watching the moon over the last four nights. Its been great watching the terminator move across the moonscape, like reading an old favorite book and remembering why you loved it in the first place.

What a treat to have an occultation to watch tonight. I got my 14 year old son to come out into the cold and have a look. "That is awesome" was his review, we then had a great discussion about life the universe and everything.

Awesome.

[CJ]

Cloudy for the disappearance, cleared, then cloud for the re appearance. Had me grinning all the same! :D

[kkara4]

mission complete, am stoked with results, much better than I was expecting. BackyardEOS failed, luckily I had contingency images which turned out amazing. no exposure stacking was necessary. once I figure out how to post, will do so tomorrow. Heavy dew here now, had to quickly pack everything away, only managed one egress shot, but the ingress memory will stay burned in my brain forever :)

[MortonH]

Great story. Glad your son enjoyed it too.

Welcome to Ice in Space! :welcome:

[Doogs38]

... and Saturn emerges from the other side :-) Terrible iPhone image but you get the idea :D I'm looking forward to seeing the images from the pros :)

[AstroJunk]

Something a bit different :)

I did record the whole shebang whilst doing the Slooh broadcast earlier, but I'm too knackered to process any video.

Here is the lightcurve of the occultation of Titan 5 minutes earlier. I've been told that it is the first ever data recorded (along with other occultation buddies in Oz) so should have a very large scientific payload regarding the size. position and possible atmospheric structure of the moon.

Backyard science is great :thumbsup:

[kkara4]

i wouldnt call that terrible, rather fantastic for a phone pic!

[tonybarry]

Hi Jonathan,

We were at UWS (Penrith Observatory) for the occ. and it was a good show. Don't know how the Linden crew got on yet.

Sky was good, no cloud, I was able to operate the LX90-10 at f/20 (5 metres focal length) for a good view of Saturn + Titan. Titan's disappearance was not instant - I have not yet done the light curve but hope to do so soon.

Attached is one frame at the beginning of the rings disappearance.

Camera was Watec 910BD analog videocamera with VTI timestamp.

Regards,
Tony Barry / WSAAG

[julianh72]

I know it's nothing compared to the efforts of others, but I managed to get a video with a 3 Mp webcam, a 2x Barlow, and a Celestron NexStar SLT 130.
Occultation of Saturn: http://youtu.be/UwYNeclqJqU
(Skip ahead to the 5 minute mark to get the start of the actual occultation.)

[multiweb]

Here's my efforts. SONY NEX-5 ISO400, 1/50s on APO 90mm + Baader FFC x3. I watched the whole thing with my binos as well. Happened very quickly.

[shelltree]

What a night!!!! :D Spectacular views, managed to get quite a few shots including egress and the tear drop effect. Will see for sure what I got when I put them up on the computer. Have barely slept, still have waaayyy too much energy :rofl:

[kkara4]

167431

167432

167433

167434

167435

Hopefully these attachments work! I had many problems, running in and out of the house like a mad man. had to keep centering image by feel due to image being sent to BackyardEOS, then the process ultimately failed because I was in 960 video mode, so resolution was poor. was hoping to do 10 to 100 frame stacks to get really good quality, but then at ISO 1000 had no quality issues with the 5D MK III anyway.

Took many contingency pictures manually, sat on a stool, gave me plenty of viewfinder time. Spent 10 minutes and liveview 10x mode to achieve critical focus then locked the mirror down nicely.

Focus plane is definitely not flat at 146mm of extension, but the field was flat looking, so really not sure what was going on there. Scope was only very roughly polar aligned and I forgot to change from lunar to sidereal tracking, so 1s exposures to get the moons and earthglow didnt work out anywhere near what I wanted.

I will try an exposure stacked mosaic later tonight.

All attached pictures are straight out of the camera, no processing, only cropped and single exposures. Really wanted to go for the natural, as the eyes see it look, and think I achieved that :).

Camera glitched for ingress, and took 11 megapixel Jpegs instead of 22 megapixel RAWs, got no idea why that happened, but something to do with backyard EOS for sure, and unplugging USB cable to take pictures manually. Saw it wasnt working and ran outside to manually take exposures. But I am stoked with the results nevertheless.

Only managed one egress picture because of dew, got lucky to get that far, moisture was building up everywhere and was a bit worried about the camera and internal dewing. That one ended up being 22 megapixel RAW, so way too big to compress down properly for this post, might get onto it tonight.

[lazjen]

Haven't processed the video of this yet, but here's some shots:

https://plus.google.com/117947786043442287168/posts/V2rn9LW8x6i
https://plus.google.com/117947786043442287168/posts/EyCdWBUYotK
https://plus.google.com/117947786043442287168/posts/1ofD6QTgoYw

[OzStarGazer]

A really simple photo taken afocally with my dob...

[algwat]

My small gif of saturn dispappearing, at blog. rgds Alan.
http://cometal-comets.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/moon-hides-saturn.html

[inline_online]

Hi all,

Crystal clear skies in Perth for the event:D
I set one of my scopes up in the front yard and invited all the local families to come over and have a look. They all loved it and are keen to come to more of my outreach events.
Hopefully some of the kids there will ask for telescopes for Christmas.

Cheers,
Dan

[Scotty]

Hi Guys and Girls
I decided to get the old telescope out last night to watch Saturn past by the moon. While I was watching I just grabbed my phone, stuck it up to the eyepiece and took some photos.
Now before we go any further, I have never done any Astrophotography before and I know you guys will think its pretty lame, but hey! I was pretty happy with the results.
Now im just using a 8" GSO dob with a 25mm eyepiece that came with it and a Nokia Lumina 520 phone, conditions at my place where very cold and clear and I was having trouble with fogging of the lense.
I have also cropped the last 2 pics, thats why they are bigger.
Anyway have a look
Scotty

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g4...140804_011.jpg

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g4...140804_036.jpg

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g4...0c389678de.jpg

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g4...a2cea4a9b5.jpg

[Redshift13]

Watched the occultation at the Old Melbourne Observatory in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Being in the old buildings with the domed wooden ceilings and looking through the old refractor gave the event a great atmosphere of "old time" astronomy.
Perfect seeing conditions - a great night. Thanks to the ASV volunteers, Barry, Rod & Linda, who hosted us for the evening.

[AstroJunk]

Lovely image scale Tony. My seeing was very poor and had hardly any of the fine detail you saw

Here's a shortcut a highlights version of last nights broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlEU0A39eM

[lazjen]

I've got a couple of videos up now.

Disappearance: https://plus.google.com/117947786043442287168/posts/WJ9ofLx5p9Y
Reappearance: https://plus.google.com/117947786043442287168/posts/TAbLnSAWuci

Quite happy with the results, although I've thought of a few things I can improve for the next time.

[OzStarGazer]

A bit closer than the other photo... but the moon looks a bit out of focus, and with more sharpening it looks pixelated ...But oh well, I used my 5" dob and a 25mm eyepiece, then I just zoomed in with the camera...

[OzStarGazer]

I don't know if it is just my computer because nobody has said anything, but I cannot open the links. I tried both Firefox and IE... Sorry... Maybe it's just some settings on my computer if they work for others.

[Redshift13]

Not working for me either...

[kkara4]

when you use photobucket mate, when you upload the pic to your album, click on the picture and then copy and past the "direct link" and post them here instead :).

Then people will be able to see your pictures!

[OzStarGazer]

Oh, it was Scott who was sharing his pics on PhotoBucket. :)

[kkara4]

ooops sorry I meant to quote the OP of those links lol.

my bad, havent caught up on the -4 hours sleep from monday night :P

[algwat]

Updated blog with timing info on the small anim full sequence... rgds, Alan