Moon - Neptune occultation?

[Marko of Oz]

Will the moon occult Neptune at about 3:30am Wednesday or just a close call? Looks to be real close in my Starry Night DD.

thanks

Mark

[gaa_ian]

Hi Mark
I will be getting up at 2:30am CST to see the ingress.
Egress is at 3:49 am CST
Attached are my CDC screen shots.

[koputai]

Stellarium has it missing by about 15 arc minutes!

Cheers,
Jason.

[AstroJunk]

If you are north of Gympie you will see it.

[gaa_ian]

Just came in from looking at the Egress of Neptune from behind the dark lunar limb.
It reminds me just how hard it normally is to find Neptune against the background stars.
Even at 156x magnification it was a challenge to make out the tiny Blue/Green of Neptune against the massive Lunar disk.
With a little patience though, it was soon obvious that yes, it was in fact a planet I was looking at.
Worth the effort of getting up for, to see it reappear at 3:49am, exactly as predicted and to realize just how far away that huge gaseous planet Neptune is !

[astroron]

I observed Neptune at about 01:45, and Neptune was about forty five arc minutes away,if I kept the moon out of the field the little blue disc was plainly seen:)Temp was 2.5 degrees:cold:
I did not stay up to watch the occultation;)
Ron

[bones]

Glad you guys saw the occultation up there. Looking at the 'Astronomy Australia 2008' book, I knew we wouldn't see the occultation here near north of Sydney (8' closest predicted), but I did get up at 3am and set up and view till after 4am (EST) till it had gone past the lunar cusp. The sky was clear as, no dew, and it was well worth a look.