Occultation of Antares seen from Australia with a Cooke

 

The occultation of Antares, 1896, May 10.

Mr. Tebbutt obtained excellent determinations of the times of disappearance and reappearance, which agreed very closely with the calculations of Mr. Joseph Brooks, and indicated the probable correctness of the adopted longitude of the Windsor Observatory and of the tabular places of the moon and star. Antares did not disappear instantaneously in Mr. Tebutt's observation, but seemed to cut its way into the moon's disk during two or three seconds, a peculiarity also noted by Mr. Merfield.

Mr. Gale, on the contrary, using a 6 inch Cooke refractor, at Paddington, New South Wales recorded the disappearance as instantaneous on contact with the limb. In spite of thick haze, the " comes " was also visible to within a few seconds of the limb, and was seen immediately on the reappearance of the larger star. Messrs. Innes, Wright, and Matthews had also observed the disappearance as almost instantaneous.