Alcyone Passes the Moon
This shows Alcyone, a bright star in the Pleiades, passing by the moon on 4/1/2006 from about 7:05 p.m. to about 7:20 p.m. The closest approach was around 7:16 p.m., and the middle row of pictures show how close things were. The graze line for Alcyone was a few miles north of where I live in The Woodlands, TX (a bit north of Houston). I shot these images from my driveway. To avoid trees and houses I had to set up in the flower bed between our house and the neighbor's. Fortunately, no flowerers were damaged getting these images. We also set up the tripod mounted 15x70 binoculars for some great visual views. See below for equipment notes.
This is a driveway shot from about 7:15 p.m., just as Alcyone slid past the terminator and the Moon slid past some pine tree branches! It's a tiny blip at the bottom. This is a 6 second exposure at ISO 100. Local sunset was at 6:40 p.m., making this shot 35 minutes after sunset. Takahashi TOA 130 (a 5" APO refractor) and Canon EOS D20a.
Alcyone is clearly visible to the left of the bottom terminator at ~ 7:09:28 p.m. This is a .6 second exposure. Same equipment as previous.
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