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What did you see tonight?


Ags

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With a less understanding partner i could easily be in trouble this morning 🤣 - making a racket coming in passed midnight last night after trying to take in as much of Mars as possible on the evening of the 7th. Alarm at 04:00 this morning to get out for the start of the occultation. Back in for a brief warm up and change of kit then quite noisily back out again for the exit of the occulation. 

In between all the Mars observation I got to the half way mark in the Astro League double stars programme last night including 17 Cep, 8 Cep, 27 Cep and 8 Lac. Seeing not great - couldn't split two targets at 5" separation.

Now for a coffee. 

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Got up at half 4 to see the big show and decided to check my phone to see how everyone else was getting on with the first clear night in ages.

Got massively distracted and missed mars going behind the moon 🤣

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Great images and write ups everyone. Hope you all got some sleep and have warmed up and de dewed yourselves.  I have had to open up the posh Christmas rocket fuel coffee this morning to make the eyes stay open, can’t delay the inevitable commute to work any longer. Look forward to reading more discussion later. 

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Great reports on here! Mars occultation difficult from my house as at around 5am the moon was over the back of my neighbour house :( Still, managed to see it with binoculars by going out in the front road, but couldn’t get a snap. 

Haven’t had much sleep as also had a good look at Mars earlier in the night. From about 10pm to after mid-night in Southampton with the 200p Dob. As it was a school night I had sent my daughter to bed. But she appeared at the back door at about 11pm saying she couldn’t sleep, so out she came. Never complained about the freezing -3C temperatures too and actually told me “it’s not that cold” :)

Although the now full disc was crisp and sharp it was hard to get many features. Could get to 300x which is really as far as I can go and it wasn’t the seeing which seemed to be excellent. The boundary of the north polar hood was sharp (best I’ve seen that), but it was the albedo features which seemed to be somewhat lacking. Still, we could see a band running east/west towards the south and it still got a “wow” from Alice. For a moment I thought it could be a large dust storm, but looking at the “Mars Mapper” I think it’s just the way Mars was facing. Looking at the image below it was simply a bit “bland” when we were observing.

When we looked last month the way Mars was facing was more interesting - could start to see dark features at just 100x - the north polar hood more extensive (it’s definitely got smaller) and we could see small areas of what I’m sure were clouds to the south. These are now gone. Mind, it was still a lovely night and what we were seeing certainly wasn’t bad!

Packed up around 12:30, gear coated in ice. Then gave my daughter a bedtime story which consisted of answering questions about Mars, many of which we’d talked about before but that I probably hasn’t explained very well.  Eg what are albedo features? What is a polar hood? How thick is the ice on the cap? Are the clouds like clouds on earth? How tall are the tallest mountains? How cold is it on Mars? Why doesn’t the South Pole have ice or hood?… I did have to look some of them up :)

PS - some of the “seeing” issues might have been down to rising heat. We rapidly went from about 6C to -3C. And the view’s definitely improved later in the night. Mars was higher and for me over less urban areas at that point. 

BE334D5F-8FD9-4C30-AD6C-6B73306928D7.jpeg

Edited by PeterStudz
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My modest snapshot a few minutes before the clouds rolled in.

I was all set up with a high-magnification video but clouds ruined play a few minutes before the occultation. Canon 700d + Tamron 500mm mirror lens.

52550832885_2c4c36294a_h.jpg

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Got up at 4.30am to see heavy cloud cover. The first contact was 4.56am and missed that - cloud. I got up again just below 6am and the Moon was just leaving the cloud cover. I saw Mars just after leaving the Moon - then total clear skies. Managed to catch the event using the 90mm frac and the 7-21mm zoom.

Well there have been different views when next there will be an occultation of Mars and the Moon. Last night was different because it was a full Moon and Mars was at its closest. The next time this will happen in the UK will be 2052.

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currently observing Mars and Jupiter. Nice Ganymede shadow transit and tail end of GRS transit right now . Seeing is weird- the edges of Jupiter are swimming yet the surface detail is crisp! Jupiter still pleasing despite being past its best :)

Mark 

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This evening saw Chris Lintott give the December Lovell Lecture at Jodrell Bank - he's very good! The next Lovell Lecture is on 19th January. Given by Prof Christopher Conselice and will be Origins: The Big Bang To Intelligent Life And Everything In Between.

https://www.jodrellbank.net/events/professor-christopher-conselice-origins-the-big-bang-to-intelligent-life-and-everything-in-between/ 

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14 hours ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

Got up at 4.30am to see heavy cloud cover. The first contact was 4.56am and missed that - cloud. I got up again just below 6am and the Moon was just leaving the cloud cover. I saw Mars just after leaving the Moon - then total clear skies. Managed to catch the event using the 90mm frac and the 7-21mm zoom.

Well there have been different views when next there will be an occultation of Mars and the Moon. Last night was different because it was a full Moon and Mars was at its closest. The next time this will happen in the UK will be 2052.

Thanks for that Mark, I was going to research when the date of the next similiar event was.  Can you tell me where 2052 came from, and is it slso on the actual day of oppostion? This surprises me, as on an intuitive basis, I thought it would be a rarer event.  Though I'm clearly no mathemitician 😅.

 

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A mixed bag last night. Out with the 8” Dob. Mars, Moon and Jupiter  - all looking great and first light with SL 8-24mm lanthanum zoom eyepiece which provided good crisp views and matches the SL ‘scope perfectly.

I wanted to take an image of Mars on opposition night - I’m not an imager in the main and no longer have mid range ZWO’s but I did pick up a ridiculously cheap SvBony 105 planetary cam this week which should be fine for taking a basic record of events occasionally - but really struggled as simply could not pull up any exposure or gain controls in Sharp Cap  - only frame rate. Driver checks, relaunched and more wouldn’t solve. Output was a very bright overexposed video that the usual planetary process flow wouldn’t fix. Oa Capture on MacOS could “see” the camera but refused to connect, showing error messages.  A lot of faff and an ice covered ‘scope by 1am, but it’s all a learning curve! Will try my DSLR next time !

 

 

 

 

Edited by Astro_Dad
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8 hours ago, paulastro said:

Thanks for that Mark, I was going to research when the date of the next similiar event was.  Can you tell me where 2052 came from, and is it slso on the actual day of oppostion? This surprises me, as on an intuitive basis, I thought it would be a rarer event.  Though I'm clearly no mathemitician 😅.

 

The last visible in the UK was something like 70 years ago, so two in 120 years is still 'pretty rare'. Globally, I guess they are more frequent than that, but (like total solar eclipses), for a specific location they are relatively rare 

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On 08/12/2022 at 07:42, Space Hopper said:

 

I think this was the first time i've seen a lunar occultation of a major planet and i can recall very close conjunctions of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn before, but never an actual occultation, so its one off the bucket list 🙂

 

There was one visible between the crescent moon and Venus Dec 1st 2008 UT 15:40 ish on (Upton) I didn't have a scope at the time but a rather longish lens on a bridge camera, cloudy then too.

 

Of all the regular, rare but repeatable events . i.e. Venus transits (saw one of those or rather projection of it) Jupiter Saturn, Venus-Pleiades (2012 and 2020 both cloudy), most are cloudy where I am, even the great Leonid shower back in 1999 it was clear in Inverness, but cloudy on Skye. (roll on 2032, bet it will be cloudy).

 

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I was very lucky and had clear skies from 17:44 when I was leaving work and started observing the approach of Mars to the Moon and took my first photos of the evening with a 50 mm prime lens on the D800, right through to second contact. It was hardly going to give me anything like an award winning photo at that focal length, but it did produce an image in which both Mars and the Moon were clearly visible and you could measure the separation between them, so useful data, I guess.

At home, I had to cook dinner, then watched a movie before venturing back outside, this time with a 300 mm lens on the D800. Much better! It was 20:30 by the time I grabbed the next images and Mars was still too far separated from the Moon to fit on the sensor with 600 mm of focal length, which was the plan for later. I really wanted to get the RC6 out with a 2x focal extender to give me 2740 mm, but my back was not going to allow, so tripod and camera lenses it was! I also had no plans at this point to stay up all night. But, as some of you already know that is exactly what happened. It was definitely worth it!

I was outside for 5 minutes every hour from 22:30 until the last half hour before first contact when I did not go back in until Mars had disappeared behind the Moon. It was quite magical to watch. Every hour throughout the night I processed images and posted one in here to record progress and for those who were not fortunate enough to have cloud free skies like I had.

My first two photos of the night are shown here for the first time. The first image is cropped from the original 7360 x 4912 to just 1200 x 800. There is a link to the rest of my sequence, below. I'll probably add these images to my thread later for completeness.

 

Mars_Luna_Occultation_20221208_8235.JPG

 

Mars_Luna_Occultation_20221208_8249.JPG

Edited by Mandy D
Mars too dim in second image
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14 hours ago, paulastro said:

Thanks for that Mark, I was going to research when the date of the next similiar event was.  Can you tell me where 2052 came from, and is it slso on the actual day of oppostion? This surprises me, as on an intuitive basis, I thought it would be a rarer event.  Though I'm clearly no mathemitician 😅.

 

Paul I first got the information from the book 'Stargazing 2022' by Nigel Henbest. On page 79 he refers to the next time it will be visible in the UK in 2052. I cannot verify this information - but I am trying.

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