[earthlight (Anne-Louise)]

Hi all,

We went out to Leyburn this weekend to see the Venus Occultation. Out there it was a grazing.

As a bonus I was able to get a few shots of the comet Q1 PanSTARRS 2014. Unfortunately lots of things didn't work, usb cables to computer, hard drives, an important box left at home etc. So all I could do was use the 2 second delay to steady the mount and max 30 second exposures. We were able to stack a few to images to see the moon and the comet.

The Venus occultation was great. We were debating who's computer would be correct, Pat's The Sky, said a full occultation, or ours, SkySafari 3 Pro/ 4 plus saying a graze. Well it was a graze but as it was a thin crescent of Venus we lost sight of it during it. A tiny horn was visible under high magnification, but not full screen. Unfortunately the wind hit at mid-occultation, and I mean hit! My observing tent folded, closed the laptop and stopped all connections to the camera. I scrambled to reconnect but ended up grabbing the intervalometer to continue manually. Hadar at this time got out his stunt kite and was flying it for about half an hour. So much for a regular image for a movie but at least I have some to show.

More will come later after much needed sleep.

Anne-Louise