| More images
Details:
The Moon occulted the Pleiades on this evening, but whoever organized the event did a poor job arranging things--not a single named Pleiad was occulted, and only the mag. 5.6 star 18 Tauri in the northern fringes of the cluster took part; however, it lies at a similar distance as the Pleiades and has a similar spectral type and is therefore probably a member. The organizer also didn't hire any bouncers to keep out undesirables, and clouds got inside. Sometimes the timelapse exposures were too short to show them directly, but they made their presence known by the fluctuating size of the glare around the Moon, which then showed up in the individual .jpg frames, which then made the conversion to the animated GIF even worse than usual. The photo reveals their ubiquity across the sky, along with a halo around the Moon; it was less than a day from First Quarter and 45% illuminated.
Astro data (all times pm MST; data from Sky Safari Pro v.6):
Sunset: 6:22
any named Pleiad none
18 Tau disappears: 7:48
Dark: 7:49
18 Tau reappears: 8:48
Photo data:
#1: timelapse: Panasonic G9, Lumix 100-300mm lens @ 150mm, Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTi
... 48 frames x (f/4.5, 1.3 sec +/- 3EV, ISO 400), cadence: 4 minutes
... individual frames processed in Paint Shop Pro 2023
... animated GIF created in SSuite GIF Animator
... date: Feb. 23, 2026 6:49-9:37pm MST
#2: halo photo: Panasonic GX8, Lumix 12-35mm lens @ 12mm, tripod
... 1 x (f/2.8, 6 sec, ISO 800)
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
|
