Awesome Saturn Occultation Mosaic

Earlier in the week if you were in Europe, you got to see this:

Image Credit: Johannes Schedler

On May 22nd, Saturn passed behind the Moon. This event was not visible in North America. The above is a mosaic taken from a 16-inch telescope. Outstanding work.

For those who don’t know, an occulation occurs when one object in the sky passes in front of another and ‘occults’ it. When the Moon does it, it’s called a lunar occultation, when a planet moves in front of a star, it’s a planetary occulation.

There’s a lot of people into timing occultations and reporting their results. Measuring occulations is an important and interesting field of study, in fact, measuring the light drop from a distant star as a planet moves in front of it, is the main method astronomers use to find extrasolar planets.

Here is a link to more info about this image from SkyTonight.

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