My first occultation capture

[lukebl]

This is my first attempt at an occultation capture using my new RunCam Night Eagle Astro camera.

The RunCam is a much cheaper alternative to the other cams around and I acquired it with the aim of using it for timing asteroid occultations. Asteroids are my main area of interest, but every potential occultation at my location for the past few months has been clouded out. However, the 3.7 magnitute star Gamma Capricornis was going to be occulted by the moon tonight, so I set the gear up to try it out. I attached the camera to my 200mm f/5 Newtonian

It seems to work ok. Here is an animation of the frames around the occultation. The bright moon causes the huge gradients and glare on the images.

The camera operates at a rate of 25 frames per second, and I have a GPS time stamper to insert the time to 1ms accuracy on each frame. Not sure if it's significant, but Calsky predicted that the occultation would occur at 20:29.0m, but my GPS timestamp says it occurred at 20:28:43.3547, a full 16 seconds difference.

Animation:

Individual frames. 20:28:43.3147

40ms later: 20:28:43.3547

[John]

And there it was, gone !

Nice capture

[fireballxl5]

nice capture!

Can you provide some details of your "GPS time stamper" please.

Thanks, 

Andy

[lukebl]

9 hours ago, fireballxl5 said:

Can you provide some details of your "GPS time stamper" please.

It's a GPSBOXSPRITE2, from Black Box Camera Company. It will also overlay the precise Latitude and Longitude of your position, although I had that turned off in this instance.

 

[peter shah]

great job....great to see the solar system mechanics working

[JamesF]

Looks very neat, Luke.  I've learnt a lot about occultation timing over the last few years.  It seems like an area where the average astronomer on the street can actually and practically contribute to real science.  I'm thinking that I might have a go myself once my observatory is up and running.

James