farewell lambda Gem

[neural]

I'm pleased to say that I've just seen my first lunar occultation! There's a thick haze and it was twilight at the time, and no stars were visible naked-eye, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. In fact lambda Gem was clearly visible at 82x in my 11mm Nagler (my favourite lunar EP). Just for fun I started a stopwatch at ten past nine exactly. 

For anyone who's reading this and hasn't seen one yet, I can recommend it. It really gave me a visceral feeling of the Moon as an enormous object relatively close to us, and of the star as unimaginably further away. And the moment of the occultation itself, it's just as people say -- the wind was rustling the leaves, a plane was grumbling along in the distance, everything was quite ordinary and peaceful, and then a star disappeared. Even when you know it's going to happen, the abruptness and the complete silence of it is quite disconcerting. 

And the final twist: the time it happened was within a second of the predicted time (that is, within my own observational error). How beautifully nature works, that we can predict the alignment of a star light-years away, the Moon tugged by the Earth and the Sun, and a street in south London, more precisely than you can press a button! 

[kerrylewis]

Yes I saw it too - see other post in this section. I love watching them. I remember an occultation of Saturn a few years ago. A wonderful sight as the rings and disc slid behind the moon and it really brought out the huge difference in scale

[Uplooker]

Hi neural,

What a fantastic report. I must admit that occultations are something that have never "floated my boat", however, after reading your post it makes me want to search one / the next one out. It is funny how you think that you "do" astronomy and then you discover all of the other aspects that people "do" and you realise that you have not even scratched the surface of it all

To Kerry,

I did read your post and would like to attribute my comments above to it as well.

Ian