Moon occults Venus, but not yet!

[petevasey]

On June 19th at approximately 0740 UT (0840 Summer time) the Moon occults Venus, which reappears a little over an hour later.  Obviously times and durations will depend on the location of the observer.  Best to use an accurate planetarium program - I favour Skymap Pro.  Daylight of course, so good clarity required.  Probably not too much turbulence that time of day in the UK.  Anyway, I decided to do some tests today.  At the moment Venus is only 11 degrees from the Sun.  The Moon well away at 58 degrees.  On occultation day the separation from the Sun will be 22 degrees to the West.

So this image is obviously a composite, but is to scale (cropped from the originals).  I've coloured the Venus background - it was washed out being so close to the Sun.  I've rotated both Moon and Venus 180 degrees to approximate their appearance at the time.   Canon 700D on TMB refractor at 650 mm focal length (still set up from my comet pics) but I will use a longer focal length on the day.  Exposure times were different today because of the sky background, but of course will be a compromise on the day.  Weather permitting - fingers crossed!

Skymap did a great job finding everything.  I pointed roughly at the Sun and told my mount it was looking at Aldebaran which is near the Sun at the moment.  Then (running it via Skymap) did a GOTO to the Sun using solar filters of course, then slackened the clutches and manually centred on the Sun.  Then it was able to find both Venus and the Moon.  Of course only one movement on the day, and the Moon much easier to see on the camera screen.

But hopefully we will see something like this although the Moon crescent will be slimmer.  All being well I'll take images at 15 second intervals and animate both entry and exit.

Cheers,

Peter.

Edited May 27, 2020 by petevasey

[Pete Presland]

Interesting view, thanks for the heads up.