Yesterday, we had a special Sunday evening because it was the first time we watched the occultation of the Venus by the moon.

The Venus (second planet from the Sun) went behind the moon which was in the new moon phase.

Let me show you the whole process with the following photos (although they were taken using my 560mm lense, but they still need to be heavily cropped to show you what has happened).

It was about 7 pm, the sky was not completely dark yet but in dark blue, I was doing some work in the garden.  I was a bit tired and stood up and looked towards the west (the direction of sunset to see if the sky was painted in a nice colour).  Suddenly, I found that a bright star was just next to the moon.  I know it is the Venus, and it reminded me about the news that I read from the newspaper a few days ago where the moon will cover the Venus.  I quickly stopped all my garden work, washed my hand and grabbed my camera…

19:23:32 (+08:00GMT):  There was still a distance between the moon and the Venus.  The sky was completely dark at that time.

From what I have learned about Astronomy, I know that the moon moves slower compared to other astronomy objects in the sky (not her own speed, but when we view it from earth as the earth is rotating and orbiting).  Do you know that the moon always rises about 50 minutes late compared to the previous day.  The moon was going to set in the next one or two hours, and I was sure that the Venus was going to overtake the moon and set under the horizon earlier than the moon.

19:30:17 (+08:00GMT): The Venus was touching the moon when I looked at them using my naked eyes, but the photo told me it was not.

Although it was only a short period of time, but two minutes would be very long if one has no patience to wait.  I keep on waiting for the Venus to disappear, but it was still there.

19:32:27 (+08:00GMT):  The Venus was starting to touch the moon.

My brother joined me because I borrowed his tripod.  He has a lighter tripod and easier to be setup.  The mosquitoes kept on biting us.

Without professional equipment that usually owned by the astronomy photographer, the quality of these photos has limited quality, and I purposely edited and made them over-exposed so that it can show the entire moon disk (which include the dark area of the moon).

19:34:38 (+08:00GMT):  The Venus has partially gone into the moon, and this is the last photo before the Venus disappear.

Before that I was shooting in burting mode (4fps) and stopped about every 10 frames for a few seconds, at this time, I switched away the shooting mode to single shoot, and prepared to take a break.

It was now time to move my tripod because the roof of a building was going to block the moon.  While waiting for the Venus to come out, I setup my own tripod because it can hold my camera better.  I also helped my brother to find a better location to shoot.  The tall building next to our house blocked a big piece of sky from us.

My brother shoot video mainly.  He has a strange way holding his tripod.  He did not extend the legs of the tripod and put the tripod on the ground but he hold the tripod with his hands instead of holding the camera directly, he said this way is still effective.

19:52:31 (+08:00GMT):  The Venus was still covered by the moon.  We kept on waiting, and got our camera ready.

At about 8 pm, a piece of cloud came from random direction and covered the moon.  We kept on waiting hope that the cloud would go away but it did not.  We stopped our moon & Venus shooting session when the mosquitoes kept on attacking us.

This was how the surrounding looked like before the sky turned dark.

I hope I can encounter more eclipses,  occultation and transits of planets, planet’s satellite and stars.  Some of them occur quite frequent, but in a fixed location on Earth, it might happens only in a few thousands years.  If you want to know what eclipses,  occultation and transits mean in astronomy, you can check them on Wikipedia.  :)

According to the newspaper, occultation of Venus by moon will only happen again 20+ years later, but from what I read from here I found that there is 1 to 3 time of Venus occultations each yaer, but most of them are not visible in my location (Kuching, Malaysia).

Related Posts:  Moon Eclipse on 17 Aug 2008.

We found two thorny trees in the DBKU Orchid Garden which we have visited recently.  The entire trunk is full of thousands of short, fat but sharp thorns.

“Don’t come near to me or you will get hurt”, said the tree to everything around it including human, birds, squirrel and other animals.  I cannot imagine what would happen if a bird with bad eye sight accidentally knock on these trees, it would be extremely unfortunate.

In the natural world it is not difficult to find flora and fauna that protect themselves, such as rose, porcupine etc.  They have been over protecting themselves (although they might or might not launch an attack).  Parents would ask children not to run around the area with thorny plants.  Gardeners would also have to take extra precautions when they handle these type of plants.

Sometimes, we, as human are also over protecting ourselves - verbally especially.  I believe you have encountered this type of people.  Those are stubborn people who always thought that others are wrong except themselves.  They always disagree with what others said or thought about.  Usually their words always come with thorns and they hurt others without noticing it, and thought that it is the absolute law.

All living being has this characteristic (at different level) because everyone has the concept of both “me” and “not me”.  This overly done protective concept is actually destroying the harmony among different living being.

Do you think the following are beautiful?

1.  Thorny words that hurt people from a mouth of a beautiful lady or handsome man.

2.  A thorny branch of a rose with human bloodstain.

3.  A cute pet turtle which try to open it tiny mouth very wide trying to bite its owner’s finger with its sharp teeth.

4.  A plate of delicious curry fish on dining table where the fish bone can cause death to the diner.

We protect ourselves from thieves and robbers nowadays where the crime rate is terrible, but we should not “over” protect ourselves from our neighbours, friends or even family.

Recently, a police killed a teenager with unacceptable reason by the teenager’s family.  It might be difficult to say who is right or wrong because different parties have their own views.  But this case shows that - everybody care more about oneself rather than the others.

There is a proverb in Chinese which says that, “Ren2Bu2Wei4Ji3, Tian1Zhu1Di4Mie4″, which means “If a person do not take care of oneself, the sky and ground would destroy“.  I do not 100% agree with it, because egoism is the root of conflict which destroy the harmony of the universe.

This is the second tree with thorns all over its trunk.  I hope there isn’t a third thorny tree in the beautiful orchid garden.

Some people who cannot find the other half in their life (bf, gf, husband or wife) are those who always show their thorns and “over protect” themselves.  Do you agree?  But since nowadays there are too many bad guys around, we cannot neglect self protection for our safety.  But it must be balanced.