Astro-Trek, Supermoon and Lunar Occultation of Aldebaran

[Rhushikesh-Canisminor]

Hello!

So beginning of this week turned out to be pretty happening for me.  We had Supermoon on Sunday night(13 Novemer)-Monday evening (14 November) and  Lunar occultation of Aldebaran on Tuesday(15 November). It  was great to enjoy both the events.

Since few  of my friends wanted to experience Supermoon night  from a dark site,  I planned to go to  one of my regular stargazing site at Naneghat (Maharashtra state, India, 2500 ft  above sea level). If trekked, it takes approx 3 hours from mumbai to reach the base and 2 hours of trekking to reach the site.

Since full moon was from approx 11:45 pm on Sunday  to 7:30 on Monday, we planned to spend the night at the mountain top and come back on Monday afternoon.

With few newbies with us, trekking part kind of extended but it was totally worth of it at the mountain top. We spent the night roaming around the mountain in full moon light, listening to wild animals. Since it's a sheer drop of 2500 ft from the edge, the whole thing put up a nice view! With few village lights from the base, it gave an Ocean like feeling! We didn't require any flashlight at all to roam around. Unfortunately we couldn't do any proper photography because of surprise heavy winds.

After coming back, on Monday (14 November) evening, again few of my other friends decided to spend the night observing and photographing  the moon from my home.We had fun till the next morning with few experimental photographs and light paintings.

On Tuesday (15 November) we had Lunar occultation of Aldebaran. Usually  I go for visual observation with an attempt to get perfect timing, but this time I thought about getting a photograph. I couldn't observe the disappearance of  Aldebaran, but I was able to see and photograph the reappearance. It's my first attempt at astrophotography (given that it fulfills the criteria) and also my first photo through a DSLR. (Purely visual person with few of here and there cellphone clicks) so please bare me for bad quality.

Overall, it's a great start of the stargazing season for me.

Here are few photos (with occultation photo including marking) of the 3 events.