Just watched my first lunar occultation

[RikM]

Tonight I was reading through the last issue of the Cotswold AS newsletter in preparation for next months edition. We have a regular column 'Dates For Your Diary', that lists things to look out for in the following two months.  The note for tonight was about the lunar occultation of Mag 4.3 Star Epsilon Piscium. Having never witnessed and occultation, and with 20 min still to go, out to the garden I went...

I popped the Pronto out and was surprised at quite how bright the star still looked when up against the moon. Seeing wasn't the best so I experimented a bit with eyepieces and decided a 14mm eyepiece and 2.5x Barlow lens (for 80x magnification) was about the best. It framed the whole moon, and the star off to the dark side, but still gave quite a nice amount of surface detail. The contrast in the craters was excellent. Just about perfect for me.

I was enthralled. I couldn't have imagined waiting for a star to disappear could be so exciting. 

22:13 and ...wink... gone!

Absolutely fantastic. I'm off outside again to see if I can see it pop out the other side.

[RikM]

Scuppered...next door's roof is in the way

[John]

Having spent several hours out last night I'm giving it a rest tonight but this sounds an interesting event Rik