Moon runs through Pleiades 16 November

Argonavis (William) · #1 13-11-2005, 02:44 PM

As most will be aware from your "Astronomy 2005", the Moon will "occult" M45 on Wednesday night from around 8pm AEST. You all know how small the Pleiades appear in the sky - tiny little star cluster, not much more than 2 degrees wide.

The Moon substends an angle even less, of 0.5 degree and can pass right through the star cluster without actually occulting any of the unaided eye Pleiade stars. Whether this happens will depend on where you are on the Earth's surface, and the number of naked eye Pleiades that disappear may vary depending on latitude. This makes this event worth following in binoculars. The Moon is full, so it will wash out all but the brightest stars of the cluster.

Don't forget to adjust for summer time.

RapidEye · #2 15-11-2005, 06:08 AM

Seeing how that is my Birthday - anyone want to do some nice shots and send it to my as a present =-)

iceman (Mike) · #3 15-11-2005, 06:22 AM

Thanks for the heads-up AN! I'll try and get a shot of it.

astroron (Ron) · #4 17-11-2005, 12:51 AM

The sky was nice and clear tonight and was able to observe the occultation of about six of the Pleiads the brightest at mag 2.9, I missed a couple as I only remembered it at the last moment and by the time I had opened the observatory and got observing the occultation was well under way, I was only using the 20cm SCT as it has tracking and you don't need large scopes to do Luner occultations.
I then did some observations of Mars which was quite good tonight, still a fair amount of detail to be seen even in the 20cm. astroron

iceman (Mike) · #5 17-11-2005, 05:42 AM

Nothing but cloud here.
Glad you got a view ron!

astroron (Ron) · #6 17-11-2005, 11:54 PM

There will be an occultation of Beta Tauri by the Moon on or around 23:30 on the 15th December for most states in Australia except WA which wil be a bit later. The star called Enif is occulted by the Moon starting about 23:36 Brisbane time and reappears about 0:03 on the 16th This is the fairly bright star on the left horn of Tourus the Bull, so is a good object to try your timeing skills. The Moon is full on the night and in the northern sky.