Astro-Shed

In the astronomy and astrophotography hobby we are mostly observing or imaging very static objects. In a lot of ways this is beneficial as if the weather gods or our busy schedules do not allow you to observe/image one night, well there is always the next night and the night after that or even next year. However, there are things in our hobby that are very dynamic such as an eclipse or occultations which occur very rarely. With these events, you only have one shot to capture the moment. January 13th, 2025 was one of these occasions.

I read about the Moon occultation of Mars a few days in advance of the event and so I made plans to try and capture it. I had never actually attempted this before, but I had seen lots of images of previous occultations, and I imagined that it would be relatively straight forward. What could possibly go wrong?

The night of Jan 13th came, and the forecast was marginal, but I was hopeful. I opened up the observatory and soon discovered that the moon was still below my observable horizon. A quick look at my sky charts showed that the moon would not be rising above my observable horizon until about 10 minutes before the occultation was to begin. My time window just got compressed.

I hung in and finally got the moon centered in the field of view as it rose above the observatory’s wall. I focused and switched the mount over to “lunar” tracking just in time to see Mars approaching the limb of the moon. Great, I was ready….and then the clouds crept over the Moon and totally obscured the ingress event. So, I waited for the clouds to part hoping they would while Mars was still visible. As quickly as the clouds arrived, they exited just minutes or perhaps seconds after Mars had disappeared behind the Moon. Well crap, if that isn’t some bad luck. I had waited this long, so I watched for the next 55 minutes to see if the egress event was going to be possible. I held my breath as the appointed time approached and ta da, the weather gods smiled upon me, and I was able to capture the egress.

I found this was actually a lot of fun, even though I was only partially successful. It made wonder when the next occultation event is going to occur. Occultations are very location specific. One seen in Texas is not readily visible in other countries or even other states. The website The Sky. org has a listing of occultations, and unfortunately, at least for my location, the one I captured last night is the only one scheduled this year in my area. I guess I was luckier than I thought to image at least part of the event.

Clear skies!