Moon Path during Saturn occultation by the Moon

Is not Saturn that is moving… is the Moon. See it in the path that apparently followed Saturn during the last occultation we’ve seen from Earth. It took place on January the 4th 2025. Next occasion to see it live will be on the 24th of April 2031.

At our observatory we captured the Saturn occultation by the Moon. We used a small automatic telescope (Seestar) to capture overexposed and underexposed images of the Moon. At the same time we used our Parc Astronòmic Muntanyes de Prades outreach telescope, a Dobsonian 12″, to capture a high resolution image of Saturn just seconds before the first contact. We also used a barlow Televue 2,5x and ASI174MC camera to capture a video sequence that I processed by the use of planetary techniques.

We attach several screenshots to show you how I carefully located the path of the Moon during the occultation and the contact in and out points.

Data acquisition: A. Roig, J.Puche, G.Serven, S.Olivé, E.Puche

Processing: Aleix Roig
Credit: Parc Astronòmic M. Prades

Location: Prades, Tarragona (Spain)
Contact in: 17:20 UTC
Contact out: 18:24 UTC

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