Saturn Occultation by the moon - May 14 2014

Thanks for joining us tonight for the live hangout on air. Enjoy!

Not really ideal. The full moon was shining through thin cloud washing out a bit of the detail. The telescope is still ste up hopefully the cloud will clear and I can get some better stills on the egress.

Live hangouts and driving a telescope live is a tricky business. I lost focus playing around trying to improve the image due to the thin cloud. Managed to get it back into focus just as it was disappearing. The relative motion is pretty quick once you see them that close together.

One hour and ten minutes later it re-emerges with the moon a little clearer now, but surrounded by a bright halo. This time I am directly imaging it with the DLSR as well, so a really nice couple of shots on egress.

And so..... The moon drifts on towards full lunation later tonight, as Saturn slips behind it.