This past Saturday there was a Moon-Venus occultation. There was no dark magic involved, it simply means that the Moon passed in front of the planet Venus, and therefore Venus disappeared from the sky for a while.
Here in Cape Town we were ideally positioned to see this occurrence and hubbie and I was standing by with the camera. Venus moved behind the moon at 14:15 from the dark side of the moon, making it look like it just disappeared from the sky. About an hour and a half later it popped out on the other side.
But, although seeing the occultation itself was very special, the fact that I could see Venus during the day was enough to get me excited. As a friend says, once you’ve seen it for the first time, you want to kick yourself that you've never looked for it before.
The following photos were taken mostly by hubbie, with at least one (possibly two) by me. We used a Canon 350D attached to a 10 inch, 1200mm long dobsonion telescope (f4.8), no tracking (moved by hand from time to time), ISO 100, shutter speed 1/640 in drive mode.
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| Venus on the dark side of the Moon |
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| Getting closer |
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| Just a slither left |
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| O-oh, where did you go? |
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| Wait, I think I see a speck... |
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| There you are! |
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| Venus on the other side of the Moon |
I've taken the images above and added them together for a closer view.
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Right to left, close-up of Moon-Venus occultation.
You can't see the moon on 3 of the pics, because the dark
side of the moon just looked like more sky in the daylight. |
And in case you didn't know, Venus also has phases, so Venus itself looked like a "half moon."
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