A rare alignment of the Moon and Mars took place on Wednesday evening.
Observation of the event was threatened by 99.99999% cloud cover. I took my
Celestron C-8 out on the driveway about 20 minutes before the Moon was to cover
the Red Planet, even though a glow in the clouds was the only indication that
the Moon was above the horizon. Eventually a thin patch in the overcast reached
the Moon's position and allowed me to quickly align the telescope and finder
scope. At this point I attached my camera to the scope and waited for a clear
spot to pass over the two targets. At 10:10, two minutes before the beginning of
the occultation my patience and preparation was rewarded with a two second
window of clarity. I held the shutter release down and fired off 30 photos until
the clouds once again obscured my view. I never did get a visual sighting of
Mars but it did show up in the photos.
Photos were not perfect but I was happy
with the results considering I didn't even have time to fine tune the focus.
Instead I relied on the setting that I had on Sunday when I did a practice
session. Below is a photo from Sunday
