The RACOBS for January 11th was clouded out, rather fogged out! Â However about ten or so members showed up for a short presentation of Grazing Lunar Occultations by our own Mark Lang.
This was an incredibly interesting presentation about a topic not often discussed in amateur astronomy circles.
These grazing lunar occultations occur when the very edge of our moon passes in front of a star. The result is that the mountainous terrain of the Moon causes the star to disappear and reappearing several times. Because of the exacting geometry required for this to happen, a particular grazing lunar occultation can only be see from a very narrow path on earth. In fact observers even 100 feet away from each other will have different views of the occultation.
Mark also shared some very informative links:
- International Occultation Timing Association – http://lunar-occultations.com/iota/iotandx.htm
- Brad Timerson’s Graze Predication Site – http://www.timerson.net/IOTA/
Mark also shared a video of a recent Grazing Lunar Occultation:
The planning process for observing a grazing lunar occultation is quite extensive and requires a far amount of time. Maybe RAC can get together a bunch of observers and imagers to go after the next grazing lunar occultation in our area.
