I had one of those great "surprise" moments tonight - you know, the things that happen and you are there just at the right place at the right time by sheer accident.
I was out nice and early tonight, observing the moon at around 80x, looking at a few of my favourite craters, etc, when I realised that there was a "smallish" sized star (as seen through my 15mm eyepiece) not too far from the dark limb. I watched for a very short while and realised it would be occulted quite soon!
(After watching this star for a few minutes I started to get very faint "glimpses" of a close and extremely faint companion to this star - only picked it up in snatches, and only by looking off axis.)
Anyway I stayed focused on my star, watching it edge closer and closer to the moon's dark edge (the opposite actually, but you know what I mean) and at approximately 18:57 my time (by my mobile phone, only thing I had on me) I watched it very suddenly and quickly wink out! (The faint "object" near it vanished I think approximately a minute before - as I said it was so faint it was hard to know when it was there, and when it was gone.)
I came running in to check the tables in Astronomy 2006 and found (page 96, middle column) only one occultation listed tonight against Brisbane - at 20:08! Looking further into it the same object (SAO99198) should be seen going into occultation in Canberra at 19:51 and Sydney at 19:56 .... still around an hour after the occultation I witnessed.
If anyone can shed more light on this (no pun intended, really!) please let me know ... can anyone tell me which object I did see occulted?
Steve
