Selenology Today # 7 July 2007 - Home

Cristina Cellini- Italy
GLR group
OCCULTATION SELENOLOGY TODAY # 7
This was my 3 rd occultation of Saturn. The first time, in 2001, I photographed it with my
digital camera in afocal method on my Meade ETX105. The second time (March 2007) I
used my Lumenera LU075C at prime focus of my Pentax 75 but I wasn’t completely
satisfied with the result.
After two trials I was quite sure that the right focal for this type of phenomenon was my
Lumenera LU075C at prime focus of my SC Meade LX200 12”.
I took one long movie of about 3 minutes for the beginning of the occultation and
another long movie for the end of the occultation. My telescope worked very well, so I
found the planet in the right field of the camera betwen 2 nd and 3 rd contact.
For my location (Ravenna –Italy) the times of the occultation were:
1 st contact 19:33.14 UT
2 nd contact 19:34.11UT
3 rd contact 20:39.08 UT
4 th contact 20:40.28 UT
I chose to set-up the camera according to the luminosity of the planet before the
beginning of the occultation and I left this set-up for all the occultation. Just before the
end of the occultation I took a 3 rd movie with the right luminosity for the Moon.
In the next days I processed the three movies in two different modes. For the Moon I
used a normal processing with Iris setting in ”fit” mode, instead for the planet I used a
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