Sunday 15 July 2012

Jupiter Occultation

On the early morning of July 15, 2012, Jupiter was occulted by the moon. To witness this relatively rare event, I packed my car with astronomy equipment, went to bed early and set my alarm at 2:00 a.m. (my wife kindly requested me to sleep on the coach...). When the alarm went off, I quickly took a peek outside: rain. No worry, this was exactly what the weather forecast predicted. The skies would clear just before dawn, so time to go to a place outside town with a clear view to the east.

I arrived around 2:45 a.m.. The occultation would begin at (or around) 3:52 a.m. so I had time enough to set up the equipment. In the meantime it had stopped raining. I could already see several of the brighter stars. There were too many clouds to completely witness the start of occultation, but luckily for me, the final patches of clouds disappeared, so I was able to observe (and photograph) the rest of the event.

Technical details of the pictures can be found on my website.







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