Lunar Occultation 7/4/11

[NGC404]

Date 7/4/11......9pm - 9.30pm

Dont have stellarium or anything related, so dont know what stars were in view.

Using my trusty combo of 10" dob and 22mm Vixen LVW was observing the Moon at 9pm.

Saw a faint star slowly get caught up by the chasing Moon.

Sometimes stars flicker a little as they pass behind the disk.

This one was like someone turing the light out.

Went behind the Moon at 9.19pm

Also at the same time there was a brighter star that had already

emergred on the lit side. I,m guessing shortly before 9pm.

So missed that one.

One final thing. High to the right on the Moons surface was a very

bright patch on the terminator.

Was like someone was shinning a bight torch back at me.

Wondered if anyone else noticed this.

[brianb]

The faint star was HIP 19163 (mag. 7.9) and the bright star that you missed was 37 Tau (mag. 4.3)

Don't recall anything odd about the terminator but I haven't yet processed the movies I shot last night.

[NGC404]

Thanks Brian

[philipok]

Hi there - I saw exactly the same thing last night - 37 and 39 Tauri (the faint one) were occulted within an hour of each other.. but oddly enough the times given by Astronomy now were completely off.. I missed 37 coming out as I took a peak at something else..

I also noted that bright spot on the terminator - must have been a peak catching lunar sunrise?

[brianb]

oddly enough the times given by Astronomy now were completely off..

You need to reduce the times to your latitude, longitude & altitude ... magazines give a time for some central location, depending on the track of the moon relative to the star this can be out by up to 10 minutes for other locations in the British Isles, indeed in some cases the moon may miss the star completely!