It was still quite light when I set up my telescope to take images of this rare event, Saturn looked ever so small as it neared the darkened western limb of the 11 day old waxing gibbous Moon at 6.30pm. I had to keep a very close eye on the planet, because it was going to disappear very quickly behind the really dark shadow area of the Moon that was unlit by the Sun. Once Saturn disappeared it took nearly one and a half hours to reappear, it was a bit tricky working out where it would come into view again because the eastern limb was extremely bright! In reality, Saturn is a huge planet at a distance of over 1.3 billion kilometers away from us here on earth, but it looks so small as compared with the Moon which is only 384,000 kms away it’s all just an optical Illusion, like most things in the Universe…. I used a 127mm APO refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera that was attached to a tracking HEQ5 Pro mount. I used this lower powered set-up so I could captured the full disc of the Moon and do a composite image of the entire event…it worked out just as I planed :-) 1st image is of Saturn just before it disappears at 6.40pm, 12 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in Photoshop CS4. Exposures were 1/200th second and ISO 200. Image is cropped. 2nd Image is the full disc of the Moon, 12 images were stacked in Registgack6 and processed in Photoshop CS4. Exposures were 1/200th second and ISO 200. 3rd Image is a composite of the three images to show the whole event of the occultation of Saturn by the Moon over a period of one and a half hours from 6.40pm until 8.15pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment