Moon Antares occultation - June 10 2025

[Dennis]

The Moon will pass in front of Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and eastern Indonesia amongst others.

https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20250610_16_100

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 from 18:47 AEST (08:47 UTC) to 23:13 AEST (13:13 UTC)

Dennis.

[JGaugia]

:thumbsup:Had a look through my Vixen 80; 20 mm yielding 46x. The blink out was pretty, the reappearance was eerie because I didn’t know exactly where it would appear.
But fun to view something interesting after months and months of clouds and rain :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

I missed the ingress due to trees obscuring the Moon but managed record the egress.

I recorded Antares separately and made a composite using Layers in PS CC to position Antares correctly in the image.

Celestron C9.25 at F10 with Player One Saturn SQR camera. I can just make out Antares companion in the full res version.

It was quite magical to see Antares popping out from behind the Moon, well worth the effort.:)

Dennis.

[Saturnine]

Watched the approach and ingress through my 102mm F7 and 7mm UWA eyepiece for about 15 mins. enjoyed the slow approach and instant disappearance of Antares behind the dark limb though being so near to a full moon meant that there was not much dark limb to play with.

[EpickCrom]

I wanted to observe this occultation but unfortunately was clouded out here in Perth :(

[Tinderboxsky]

Fabulous catch, Dennis. I was planning to image the occultation, but did not try given heavy cloud.

Set up a simple 85mm refractor and was very fortunate to view the disappearance through a fleeting break in the clouds. Missed the reappearance by about seven minutes.

[Dennis]

Thanks Steve, I danced around like an excited little school boy when I saw Antares pop out from the Lunar limb, as I was uncertain if I would be able to see it on the computer screen as I had the exposure parameters set for the Moon.

After a good night’s sleep, I was able to stretch the AS4! Stacked image to reveal the trail of Antares, which I have boosted in intensity in this image.

Dennis

[Tinderboxsky]

Yes, they are exciting to witness, especially with Antares' colour and brightness. Have you tried for a grazing occultation? These are next level in terms of planning, being in the right location and experiencing the intermittent blinking. I have observed a couple and the memories are etched in my memory.

Looking closely at your stretched single frame, you appear to have captured Antares' companion - a mag 5.4 star, 2.5" from Antares. It's position does not quite correspond with SkySafari's, however that maybe an error on SkySafari's part. Judging by the size of the Lunar limb, you may well have had the resolution to pick up the companion.

Experienced visual observers, using high magnifications can pick the disappearance/reappearance of the companions prior to the disappearance/reappearance of Antares.

[Dennis]

Thanks Steve.

For the Antares image, I waited until the Moon was outside the FOV of the camera then recorded a SER file via Firecapture of Antares with different exposure settings.

This was at around 9:30pm some 60 mins after egress, so I could then blend this in with a processed shot of the Lunar limb.

Without performing any analyses, given that the system configuration did not change between shots, I do not think that Antares secondary would have moved by much over that period?

I have up-sampled the Antares image by x2 and you can clearly see the “pimple” of the secondary.

Dennis.

[Tropo-Bob]

Its good to read the remarks.

I managed to see the ingress, even though the Moon was behind a cloud haze. Its good that Antares is bright.

Heavy cloud prevented me from seeing the egress. I knew I was in trouble when I was using inverted vision to glimpse the Moon behind the cloud. :shrug:

[Pierre_C]

Thanks for sharing, Dennis.

Unfortunately, I had the cloud/moon occultation variation from Melbourne :(

[Dennis]

Thanks Bob and Pierre, I feel a little sheepish now for complaining that I missed the ingress due to an obstructed horizon – at least I had clear skies for the egress.:)

Dennis.

[AstroJunk]

I have a program, Lunar Occultation Workbench, which shows fairly accurate positions of companion stars. Seems to fit nicely! Antares B is a very slow period binary of around 1000 years I have read, so not going anywhere fast.

Lovely sharp image as ever Dennis :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Jonathan, that is good to know.:)

I’m a bit of a random dabbler at these events, so it is nice to hear from the dedicated experts.:thumbsup:

I’ll have a peek at that Lunar Occultation Workbench app too.

Dennis.

[h0ughy]

Awesome results Dennis. It's clearly a formed disc and not pinpoint star

[Dennis]

Thanks David, it took a bit of experimenting with the Exposure/Gain Settings to get the right combination that revealed the secondary without swamping it with the over exposed primary.

Here is a screen capture from a single Frame in Autostakkert4! showing the mag 5.4 secondary some 1.87” from the bloated primary.

SkyTools4 provides the following data on Antares:

Antares (Alpha Sco) is a Multiple Star System.
Magnitude: 1.02
Variability: Mag: V 0.88 to V 1.16

Magnitude: 1.02 (GCVS), B2
Proper Motion:
RA: -10.2 mas/yr
Dec: -23.2 mas/yr
Distance: 600 +/- 190.0 ly

AB: 0.91+5.4 mag.

Indeterminate Orbit: P=900.0 yr.

PA 278° Sep 1.87" (2025.4)

Photometry:
V: 0.910
B-V: 1.840
U-B: 1.330
V-I: 1.550
R-I: 1.230

Cheers

Dennis

[Tinderboxsky]

Your C9.25 and no doubt some good seeing, has delivered resolution that I am very envious of. I just don’t have the seeing conditions to get this level of resolution in images I have tried on close doubles - 4 arc seconds is about my limit.

I have observed Antares’ companion, visually, on several occasions.

[Dennis]

Hi Steve

Gulp – 4 sounds really bad.

From memory, when I performed an @Focus automated focusing run in The Sky X Pro, it reported a FWHM of around 2 which was surprisingly good given the ferocious jet stream overhead.

Cheers

Dennis.