Hello all,
Yesterday was not beginning very well: extremely rainy and windy (I broke my umbrella) but in the afternoon it became sometimes sunny.
After supper and loading the car (I'm afraid the binoculars fell a little too hard on the ground and got misaligned), I left for Louvain La Neuve (same place as friday morning, 70 km south from home).
I was the second to arrive so I could better choose the parking place (important as I wanted to used the car's battery for the PC and the ETX90 telescope).
Venus was bright (near trees) and I got everything outside. The webcam was used (after years of sleeping at home) and the arriving public was shown the Moon on the PC screen; then it bacame darker on the lower left side !

My friends were a little further on the grass and I joined them, moved the scope and the binos closer to them, with the digital camera....The sky was extremely clear (the rain had wiped the clouds from the sky) and the Moon transformed itself minute by minute. It was a very deep red and lots of faint stars surrounded the Moon. At least, we could see more stars than during a normal full Moon night. Belgium had organized all kinds of public gatherings for the event .(Hey, a saturday night, what an opportunity!!). And judging by the huge number of mails this morning, it was a success!!!

My ETX is old, the autostar doesn't work anymore, the viewfinder basement is no more glued on the tube and the batteries place is full with dubious stuff...But it still works for the Moon, the planets and the Sun!!!

Here are the pictures. I saw many much better ones but not mine.

On friday morning, the Moon and Saturn were visible before and after the occultation but not during the most interesting part, on saturday night, the sky was totally cloudless but when I got back home, clouds came back!

Exceptionnal moments: first the Moon meets the Pleiades, then Saturn, then our shadow.