Stellar occultation during lunar eclipse – ingress

The occultation by the Moon of star HIP 39869, located 5930 light years away in the Cancer constellation. This sequence of images, taken at 04:56 GMT on 21 January during a lunar eclipse, shows the star shortly before disappearing behind the Moon’s disc.

During the eclipse, the Moon is engulfed by Earth’s shadow and the only sunlight that reaches its surface is diffracted by our planet’s atmosphere, giving it a red-orange tint.

These images were taken at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid, Spain, with a Newtonian (reflecting) telescope CG8 with 20-cm aperture, and a Canon EOS550D camera.