There were clouds around this evening but for a short while it cleared, and I went out to check if the Antares Occultation was already over or not. I grabbed a pair of binoculars to check and headed out to check. It was so incredibly humid out I had to heat up the binos with a hair dryer for 10 minutes to get some of the inner optics to un-fog enough for me to see the Moon and star. Once I saw it was there I quickly ran and got my 600mm with 2x that I have been using every day to take images of sunspots. Now I had to do the same to un-fog the lens. Now I had to carry the equipment across the street and set it up so I could image the occultation. I did not have time to set up tracking so I set the ISO high so I could take quick images.

Now it was 87F, the humidity was 79% and the heat index was 99F, I usually like it warm out but my t-shirt was soaked in just a couple of minute's time. I took a couple of quick pix before taking 2 minutes to go in and change from sweatpants (and boy were they) into shorts and by the time I came back out it was gone. You can see by this pic that the edge of the Moon was nearer than I thought it was. I took a few shots for a correct exposure of the Moon so I could do the following picture and packed it in. It was going to be an hour before it reappeared and likely be below the tree line, and stop sweating profusely!


(2023 08 August - 5DSr - 282 (Antares Occultation))