Saturn occultation - 16 april 2002


Pictures on this page were taken in Saclay near Paris.

Equipment used for photography was composed of a MEADE LX10 8" telescope, a 40 mm Super Plössl eyepiece and an EPSON PC3000Z digital camera.


Global view before immersion

10 minutes before immersion begins. Saturn seems moving tangentially to the lunar limb. Every observer wonder if immersion will reallly occur !

10 minutes before immersion

 


Immersion

Immersion begins at 23H00 local time. Saturn is slowly vanishing along the dark lunar limb. Ten minutes later, Saturn has completely disappeared.

Immersion begins

Immersion movie (640x480 .GIF format 308K)

30 seconds between consecutive frames.


Emergence

10 minutes elapse and Saturn comes back again. A slight haze curtain has moved in front of the scenery, making the moon orange colored.

A few minutes after emergence

 


Global view after emergence

Saturn light is altered by the haze. It is now quite impossible to get an image of the planet without light saturation over the moon crescent.

After emergence

 



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