Moon in Pleiades

Last night, I had a nice time watching the moon glide through the Pleiades. I had set up my binocular chair, with a pair of Celestron 20x80 tubes mounted on the A-frame above my seat.

It first seemed to me that the moon might occult Merope, but as the moon began to cross the open star cluster, it soon became clear that Merope would glide past the north pole of the moon without being covered. That meant that all the major stars would be spared the embarrassment of being covered by our moon -at least as seen from San Antonio, Texas.

Further south, it is possible that some of the sisters may have been covered by the moon. However, further north, the stars would have been even further north of the Moon.

Attached to this blog is a Cartes du Ciel image of the Occultation from about 930 PM. It is about the same time as a fellow San Antonio Astronomer took a great photo of the passage. She had that photo published on the Space Weather.com website today.