Occultation of mag 6.8 star, and other things...😉

[Stu]

I was observing the 9.7% illuminated Moon this evening, and at some point noticed that it was going to occult a reasonably bright star. Checking it out, it was mag 6.8 HD49381, due to disappear behind the earthshine lit limb at about 10.18pm.

I managed a quick handheld smartphone shot a few minutes before which captured it really well, and enjoy it as it blinked out instantaneously. It is often more fun when it is behind a dark limb so it appears to blink out for no reason, but this was beautiful to see too.

I also enjoyed viewing the tiny beads of light showing around the limb beyond the end of the terminator, really lovely, perhaps 4 or 5 of them including tiny dots, presumably the suns rays catching high features with the lower ones in shadow still.

Whilst I’m here, Venus looked beautiful, although quite wobbly with the poorer seeing, similar story for tiny Mercury although I could see the phase; just visible in the rather poor image.

Oh, and spot the tiny crescent in the last image through the Genesis.

[mark81]

Great pictures Stu, that must be one good phone camera to pick up that little star - it must be quite satisfying to duplicate the image from SkySafari....

Mark