|
|
|
Special Projects
- Saturn's
occultation by the moon on 29 March 2019
This was already
the second Saturn occultation we could observe in Namibia. Pictures of the
occultation of Saturn in 2014
are shown
here
Back to Special Projects |
|
|
|
|
29 March 2019 - Saturn's occultation by the moon in
the morning sky
The close
encounter of the Moon with Saturn on 29 March 2019, visible from Germany, could
be observed from Namibia as Saturn occultation. The image on the right shows
the imaging instrument, the Celestron C14 from Onjala Observatory.
Recording video module was a ZWO ASI
224C. Together with a Baader UV/IR pass filter the camera was used in the
primary focus of the C 14 at f = 3.900mm focal length. The beginning of the
occultation was at the bright moon limb with an illumination of about 40%. The
exit was after sunrise and was therefore not observable.
All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on
them.. |
|
|
|
The
weather conditions were even worse than in 2014. the cloud cover was almost
completely closed with haze clouds over it. after getting up early in the
morning we thought for some time whether it would be worthwhile to open the
dome at all and start the observation.
The picture on the left shows the
cloud cover the next morning after sunrise and corresponds approximately to the
conditions shortly before the beginning of Saturn's occultation. The following
images are basically only available on 2
rawavifiles.
The
two images below show on the left a single image from the raw avi, exposed on
Saturn and on the right exposed on the moon limb. |
|
|
|
|
Moon and Saturn, Monday at 03:28:38
UT |
Moon
and Saturn, Monday at 03:30:48
UT |
|
|
|
|
|
In
addition, there are avifiles of the individual occultation phases (tracking on
sideral) with 300 single images each, 200 of which were added with registax.
Even during these short time phases the moon moves so far that the moon's limb
becomes blurred.
These files were only used to place the moon's limb
geometrically at the right place during the 4 occultation phases. The two dark
craters at the moon's limb are: Riccioli (small) and Grimaldi (large). The
picture on the left shows 4 phases of Saturn's occultation at the times:
03:31:14 UT 03:31:39
UT 03:31:57 UT and 03:32:08 UT |
|
|
|
All Images and all Content are © by Wolfgang
Paech + Franz Hofmann |