The January 30 2023 Mars occultation occurred during daylight, about an hour before sunset.  A huge storm deluged all of the Hawaiian islands Monday morning so the outlook for being able to even view the occultation was dismal.  However, around noon, there was some clearing so my wife and I headed to the western side of the island hoping to experience a grazing occultation.  The cloud outlook looked fairly good on Saddle Road but there appeared to still be quite a bit of cloudiness further to the west so we decided to take our chances at the Gilbert Kahale Recreation Area at about 6500' elevation.  This location was not far enough to the west for a graze but Mars would only briefly be totally occulted.

I set up my C11 and was only able to point the mount roughly north.  The just past first quarter Moon was nice and bright against a nice blue sky in between some large cirrus clouds.  I used a ZWO IR850pass filter and my ZWO ASI678MC camera.  The IRpass filter was due to it still being quite bright an hour before sunset.  I was able to acquire the Moon and get focused.  Mars was visible very close to the Moon.  One problem with the site was the wind.  The tradewinds come into Hawaii generally from the northeast and get funneled between the two 13,000+ feet Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa so it can often be quite gusty.  I tried to use my car as a windbreak but it only provided minimal protection.

Of course, about the time for the start of the occultation, a large band of cirrus clouds completely covered the Moon.  All I could do was wait and hope.  I used Stellarium to model the occultation to see where Mars would emerge.  Then, just as Mars was emerging from behind the Moon, the clouds moved on and I was able to capture a 120 second video comprised of 4400 frames.  The motion of the Moon over the 120 seconds was too much to allow for stacking so I used PIPP to break the original capture video into 100 frame segments which I was able to stack.  Rather than create 44 100-frame videos, I just created 1video at 500 frame intervals and then processed those 10 through AutoStakkert!3 and ImPPG for sharpening.  I used PS CC to align the images on the Moon and create 10 aligned images showing the apparent movement of Mars for the animation.

Each of the 10 images are only 50 stacked frames so the resulting GIF has more noise than I would like but it works for a first pass.  The IR850pass filter made the resulting images monochrome but probably gave a better end result than had I just used an IR cut filter during the daylight.

Unfortunately, I didn't continue with a second 120 second capture but tried to get a smaller ROI to try to get a faster frame rate so unless I can work those images into this animation, this is all that I have for now.  I may process the additional frames to perhaps make the animation a bit smoother.

My decision to use the GK Rec Area site rather than continue to the graze line site turned out to be a fortunate one as observers further west were clouded out for the occultation.