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The air was so clear on this evening (May 20) I could follow Sirius, no more than 2-3 degrees high, with the unaided eye to where it set in a notch in the mountaintops west of town. I rushed to grab the camera to record the event and didn't have time to set up the tripod.
The next evening (May 21) I watched Sirius in binoculars as it set. It entered the notch and appeared to "walk" down the slope for 10-15 seconds, disappeared for a second behind a large boulder, reappeared for another couple seconds or so, then disappeared for good when it reached the bottom. As it dropped it flashed all the colors of the rainbow due to atmospheric scintillation. You definitely got a sense of Earth's rotation since you could see Sirius move diagonally downwards in real time through the notch until it vanished at the bottom. Notch traversal took less than 30 seconds.
Photo data: Panasonic G9 with handheld 100-300mm lens @ 100mm, f/4, 1/4 sec, ISO 1600.
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