Grazing the Moon

Dave Nelson tipped me off about an neat astronomical event, a "grazing occultation". Between 9:05 and 9:15 on January 31st the Moon passed in front of the star Botein, resulting in an occultation. In this case only the edge of the Moon covered the star, making it a grazing occultation.

What really stood out for me was the optimal path of this event. As we all know, astronomical events don't look the same from everywhere on the planet. Take an eclipse, people sometimes take cruises miles out into the ocean to catch the perfect fit of the Moon over the Sun, while a thousand miles away the eclipse appear to be more partial. Lunar eclipses, ugh. It's going to be years before New Jersey is in a good spot to see the show. But this was an amazing exception. Dave sent me a map showing the line of optimal positioning for this event - and it went right through New Jersey! And not just anywhere in the state, for northerners like me it was a true gift from the heavens. The line passed through Rockaway and Andover. I'm in Roxbury township, so I was pretty close to the front row right from my yard!

I was able to get a couple shots by placing my digital camera to the eyepiece on my 10" Discovery Dobsonian. I dimmed the Moon by using an approach John Andrews told me about just this weekend. He mentioned "stopping down" his scope on bright objects to increase contrast. He simply placed a cover on a 8" scope with a 4" hole cut in it. I did the same, cutting a 12" piece of cardboard in a circle, then removing a 4" circle from the center. I still got a great view of the Moon, but a lot less blinding! Cutting back the light enabled me to get the star in there too.

The top image shows Botein at 9:01PM before it disappeared behind the Moon, the bottom image show it at 9:14PM, moments after it reappeared.

 Steve Gale