Daytime Observational Challenge

[glend (Glen)]

Coming up on the 22nd of February (a Saturday morning), there will be a daytime occultation of Saturn by the Moon which should be visible if your on your game and live south of Townsville.

There is a write up of this daytime observation event in the Feb/Mar 2014 issue of Australian Sky & Telescope on page 60.

In Brisbane the event will begin around 9:12am AEST , in Sydney 10:02am DST. Saturn will appear to approach the moon's bright edge and disappear behind the moon, reappearing later (11:10am in Sydney, and 10:14am in Brisbane) as it emerges from behind the dark edge of the moon. The challenge of course is to be in the right position to catch it as it reappears apparently from thin air (as that part of the moon will not be visible). The moon and Saturn will be around 35 degrees altitude in the western sky at the time of the event.

Aperture and magnification will be useful to capture this event and the author (Steve Kerr) recommends a red filter to darken the background and make it easier to find and track Saturn.

So let's get out there on Saturday morning the 22nd of February find this event.

Obviously, avoid pointing your scope anywhere near the sun. A solar filter is not required for this event and that is another reason to avoid the sun location carefully and ideally try to shelter the scope in the shade but with line of sight to the moon. Children must be carefully supervised to avoid accidental sun slews!.

[Tinderboxsky (Steve)]

This occultation is definitely on my Feb observations list. I'll be looking for both the disappearance and re-appearance events down here in Tassie.

My last successful daylight occultation observation was that of Spica Jan 6th last year.

Looking forward to this occulation.

Steve.

[PhilTas (Phil)]

G'day Glen & Steve,

Hope you have luck with the occultation. I'll miss it from Darwin but weather permitting, will try and spot both moon and Saturn from here.
I've given some thought to driving down the track to see if I could see it as a graze event, probably have to go to between Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Been looking for info to try and calculate where the graze will cross the Stuart Hwy, but no joy yet. Will depend a lot on the weather at the time.

I did see a daytime occultation of Venus about 9 years ago, it was mid morning and the moon was only about 3 days before new. I remember it being very hard to spot, but picked up both a few minutes before the event with an ETX105

Cheers Phil

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by PhilTas

G'day Glen & Steve,

Hope you have luck with the occultation. I'll miss it from Darwin but weather permitting, will try and spot both moon and Saturn from here.
I've given some thought to driving down the track to see if I could see it as a graze event, probably have to go to between Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Been looking for info to try and calculate where the graze will cross the Stuart Hwy, but no joy yet. Will depend a lot on the weather at the time.

Phil,
A bit of fiddling with Google Maps and CdC puts the graze at about where Ali Curung Rd crosses the Stuart Hwy at 20:57.750S, 134:12.453E. Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve looks to be a bit too far north and Davenport a bit far south. I'll leave you to refine my estimate, but given the size of Saturn you should have a fair bit of leeway. Time should be about 8:50 CST

[PhilTas (Phil)]

Thanks Andrew,
I didn't think of using CdC for this, I'll have a play when I get home tonight.
Am still unsure whether I'll go, got to get all the holes to line up.
Cheers Phil