The saturn/lunar occultation was just amazing!

Around 8pm I went downtown palo alto to do some xmas shopping. As I was heading back to the car around 10:30pm I looked up at the moon and noticed saturn awfully close to it. Better get home.

Once back at the house I dragged the scopes out back onto the patio. The question was.. what power to use.. what scope? It turned out that the 8" f/6 at about 100x gave the best view. About 30 minutes before the event, there was alot of glare in the eyepiece. Fortunately, as saturn got closer to the moon, this glare diminished substantially such that I could see the dark limb of the moon and also saturns moons. About five minutes before the event some lone clouds momentarily occulted the moon!

A quick check with WWV verified that my watch was correct.

At the right time.. it started. I could see saturns moons pass behind the dark limb. (For a moment there I thought just maybe saturn would go in front!) Then the rings got cut off by the limb. Finally, and quickly, the planet and rings (and all of saturn's moons) were behind the moon.

But the real show (imo) was the reappearance!

During the occultation, out came the binoculars for some bright-deep-sky gazing. M31 was visible, but M81/M82 were tough. I also spent a bit of time on the Orion Nebula -- though the seeing was iffy.

By now the moon was getting blocked by some trees to the west. So I gathered the scope, chair, etc, and headed out to the driveway where the view was unobstructed.

Right on time -- and I guessed right where to put the field -- saturn's rings reappeared. This was amazing! Seeing saturn "rising" over the lunar surface was just fantastic. It reminded me of the apollo photos of earth rising over the moon's horizon.

Once it was over I grabbed a camera and took a few shots through the eyepiece of saturn just below the moon. (We'll see how those turn out :^/) Then it occurred to me that this might make a nice wide field shot. Back inside I went to get the ETX for a bunch more photos at prime focus.

Also, I used a moon filter for the rising part. This cut down on glare and also seemed to improve contrast on saturn just a bit.