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[Centaur]

The waxing gibbous Moon will occult Saturn and Regulus on successive nights this month. The events will be visible from northwestern North America - in the case of Saturn mainly from Alaska. In both cases the immersions will occur on the Moon’s dark limb and the emersions on the bright limb.

To see my graze maps go to www.curtrenz.com/astronomical.html . Only the southern graze paths are depicted since the northern paths would be in outer space above the North Pole. Those north of the graze paths may witness full occultations. Those desiring occultation data for specific locations should feel free to reply to this thread with a longitude, latitude and altitude above sea level.

Below are my predictions for the Saturn occultation from Anchorage and the Regulus occultation from San Francisco. In the latter case the emersion will occur just before the pair sets. ZA is the object’s Zenith Angle measured counterclockwise from the zenith along the lunar limb.




2007 APR 25
Anchorage, AK
Lon W 149.8860°
Lat N 61.2151°
Alt 20 m

Waxing Moon 62% Illuminated.

Saturn
RA 09:24:10
Dec N 16°27’
Mag +0.4

Immersion
02:14:54 AKDT
ZA 124.4°

Emersion
03:01:20 AKDT
ZA 228.9°




2007 APR 26
San Francisco, CA
Lon W 122.4170°
Lat N 37.7835°
Alt 20 m

Waxing Moon 71% Illuminated.

Regulus
RA 10:08:46.6
Dec N 11°55’52”
Mag +1.4

Immersion
02:46:54 PDT
ZA 080.9°

Emersion
03:41:04 PDT
ZA 232.5°

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I remember my Jupiter/Lunar occultation about two years back. The account is here somewhere on the Chicago Astronomer.

I observed the event on the observation terrace at the Adler Planetarium. It's a rapid event to observe in the eyepiece when the two celestial bodies start to meet, for a second, Jupiter actually looked like a dome on the surface of the Moon. And like a fast sunset, it was gone.

Too bad we can't view these here.

[Centaur]

Indeed, Joe, I remember your fine report of that daytime event after you had responded to my alert. It occurred on 2004 NOV 09.

Occultations of bright objects don't occur at specific locations nearly as often as folks seem to think. There's a lot of black out there behind a Moon that takes up a smaller area of the sky than in our imaginings.

Here in Chicagoland we'll be in favorable positions for nighttime occultions of Mag 2.9 and 3.7 stars on May 3 and 10 respectively. In fact the latter will be a graze if you're willing to venture to central Wisconsin. I'll provide more details after the Saturn and Regulus occultations have concluded.