November 29, 2007 Moon Graze Observation

A group from the Raleigh Astronomy Club met just before sunrise on November 29, 2007 to observe a grazing event of the Moon. A star passed just close enough to the Moon to pass behind its limb. In the video you will see the star disappear and reappear as it passes between peaks and gaps along the limb of the Moon. The star passed farthest behind the Moon at approximately 10:49:35 UTC for the location where we setup.

Note the video has the incorrect timecode - it is showing local Eastern time (-5 from UTC)!

Conditions were partly cloudy and you can see the clouds blowing by in the video. I used several processing techniques to make the star more visible despite the presence of the clouds. Near the end of the video we had some significant clouds move by and it wasn't possible to detect the star any more. You will see me move the scope around at one point because I just couldn't make out anything from the raw video feed as I was capturing video. By blind luck I kept the star within the field of view!

Here is what the raw video looks like: