|
Jupiter passed behind the moon at 09:35 UTC, which due to an unfortunate turn of the Earth, is 2:35am here. I woke up at 1:50 in the morning and checked the cloud situation. It had been cloudy all day but was nicely clear. I put my photo gear in the truck and stopped by Bob's place. He was still up working on his homework; he took a break and we drove off to a good viewing site. We set up at the pullout along 502 right at the end of the airport runway. There was no traffic and the view from this spot was pretty good. The moon had already risen and we had about 10 minutes before the reappearance. Being two in the morning, we opted not to set up the telescope and deal with all of that, and instead just made this a quick photo experience. As a result, I used my flimsy tripod for support of the 300-D and my 100-300mm telephoto. I took a number of test shots of the thick crescent moon before the reappearance to get an idea of the exposure and f/stop combinations that gave good detail of the moon. Jupiter reappeared from behind the moon at approximately 2:35am local time.
I took about 20 pictures at ISO 100, 300mm, and f/8 with heavy exposure bracketing to make sure I got a good mix. Vibration was a serious problem with the weak tripod, so about half of the shots were ruined by streaks. Between vibration and bad exposure choices, I was reduced to about three shots that were any good. Even these weren't all that hot; my lens is just too blury at 300mm. I did take a bracket at 200mm, where the lens should be more solid, but all of the properly exposed ones were unfortunately streaked by vibration. The end result is that for this application, my tripod and lens are both inadequate. We got great weather but there just wasn't any way to get a sharp shot with my gear. For planetary occultation by the moon, it really isn't important to get the full moon in frame, so I think the right way to go would be to set up the telescope in Alt-Az, do a good alignment and SMT training, then have it track on the planet and shoot prime focus around the contacts. Hopefully, the next time the moon occults something bright, it'll be at a more reasonable hour (or at least on a weekend!). |