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These images are from the night of the occultation on Jan 26-27. There is an image of the area of the moon which was to be targeted by Aldebaran. The first one with Aldebaran visible in the field is at 23 04 30, the last is at 23 21 06. The weather deteriorated markedly and the last images are very under-exposed. The moon disapeared completely 10 minutes after the last image which was just before occultation. Reappearance later that evening was in turn occulted by the next storm moving in to keep us company. The scope is stopped down to about 3 3/4" with the use of the Optec F3.3 focal reducer. Because the focal reducer makes the system so fast photographicaly it is impossible without an aperature mask to have the shutter speed fast enough to avoid over-eposure of the CCD chip when imaging the moon. A filter is another solution to this problem. The mask probably could have been removed as the clouds moved in but it was tempting simply to increase the exposures slightly instead. These ranged from .02-.05 seconds. With a transient event such as an occultation I'm hesitant to change too much on the fly for concern of losing the event when it occurs. With the weather as it has been it was lucky to do any imaging at all. It is captured with MaxIm DL software and processed slightly then finished in Adobe Photoshop 4.1.Photoshop.The images were unbinned but reduced in size after processing. The scope is a Meade LX200 12" and the camera is a Pictor XT 416. Click on any of the thumbnail images to see the original images
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