Surprise occultation

[StarSapling]

1/19/2016 - Oracle, Arizona - Seeing good - trans - poor (High thins with some breaks) obs. - poor (tired)

90mm f10 refractor - 36x

At approximately 18:10 local (7 hours behind U.K.), I decided to try and observe Luna through the breaks in the prevailing high thin clouds. When I got the scope on it, I immediately noticed that there was a bright orange star soon to be occulted by it (Aldebaran). I watched it for a while, but with the moon being in a waxing gibbeous phase and looking through the haze of high thins, I couldn't really determine exactly where the edge of the dark limb was. I decided I had time to run inside and get a higher power eyepiece. Sadly, I was wrong. When I got back to the scope, Aldebaran was gone! Darn it!!!!

[Paul73]

Bad luck

Whereas I knew that it was happening. Woke up with the alarm at death o'clock, couldn't work out why I had set it for when the moon was still up, moved it on an hour and went to sleep.....

Hopefully someone will have got a video.

Paul