Dec 7 Mars occultation

[Astrnmrtom]

Had clear skies and was able to capture Mars and the Moon prior to the actual occultation with my a6000. I imaged at prime focus through my 6" refractor - f/8, 1200mm. Mars is the little red dot to the left of the Moon. Don't have any to post of Mars as it slipped behind the limb because I swapped out the Sony for a dedicated astro-camera for the close-ups. I did a little levels adjustment to improve the contrast on the lunar disk.

It was a tough couple targets due to a significant difference in brightness. Still, I am impressed with the 'ol 6000's dynamic range. The full Moon is a tough target on its own.

Enjoy.

Tom

• ILCE-6000
• 1/1600 sec
• ISO 320

 

[Cαscαdian]

Very cool that Mars is resolved so nicely. I need to get my 6" f/5.6 into the game..

 

[Jeff A]

Very nice Thomas. What software told you that was going to happen? Oh, and what part of the US are you?

 

[Astrnmrtom]

I knew about it through an astronomy forum, and news articles. I'm an amateur astronomer so am usually keyed in on what's happening in the sky.

I used two programs for doing some pre planning. One was a free planetarium program that I run on my Windows laptop, called Stellarium. It takes a little getting used to, but it's quite powerful. You enter your location, and then any time and date, and it shows a zoomable map of the sky at that time. You can step forward and backward in any time interval, and can lock the view on a particular object. In this case, either Mars or the Moon. I entered the predicted time minus about 20 minutes, then stepped forward to see just where the entry and exit point would be. Only difficulty was the image of the full moon used in the program didn't have the same lighting and contrast as the live view, so matching up the program view with the actual moon was tough. Entrance point was easy because I could just follow Mars. I missed the exit because I centered the scope on the wrong area of the limb to catch the moment Mars emerged. It happened just out of the field of view.

At the scope, I was using the laptop to image, so I used Sky Safari Pro on my android tablet to do the same kind of simulation. Its a paid version.

The image was taken from Quartzsite Arizona.

Tom