Spaceweather.com sent an e-message about a Moon-Venus Occultation that piqued my interest! Of course, I was hoping it would be occurring at night and when I am at Chiefland. No such luck. It was to be a daytime event when the Moon was low in the southwest (27 deg elevation at ingress; 12 deg at egress) and that it would occur Monday, Dec. 7 while I was at work. 🙁 At that point, I should have written it off but was challenged with the idea of doing it remotely using the Chiefland RCOS. I have never imaged remotely during the daytime but as long as I kept the scope from looking at the Sun, I figured I should be fine. A check of the “Chiefland Astronomy Village Clear Sky Chart” was 100% discouraging – all white boxes during the event. Not deterred, I was set-up at work with my laptop and watching the satellite cloud cover just before the event when the clouds miraculously cleared! I called Barry who was at Chiefland to confirm the parting of the clouds and even he was genuinely surprised at how the sky cleared off so suddenly! So, I opened up to a gorgeous blue dome sky on my webcam and started shooting away recording the ingress of Venus behind the Moon at 12:43PM EST and egress at 2:09PM EST! A wmv movie is above. The large star artifact in each image is the uneven illumination of the field due to the very short exposure in my Apogee Camera which has a Melles Griot iris shutter (see link below for description, if you are curious). My histotechnologist at work was quite amazed that we were operating all this 320 miles away! I was happy to pull it off during the day with no hitches! I did close the observatory roof during the time it took for Venus to traverse behind the Moon (over an hour) because the Sun was so bright on the camera and scope! Would rather have witnessed the event firsthand but secondhand was fun!
http://mellesgriot.com/products/Shutters — Iris shutter as in my Apogee CCD Camera