Lunar occultation of Beta1 Scorpii

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed


Objects: Acrab

The Moon will pass in front of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab), creating a lunar occultation visible from Africa, Northern America and Southern Europe. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Fairfield, though it will be visible from eastern parts of the Contiguous United States.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Canada 02:03–03:09
Algeria 03:36–04:38
Morocco 03:29–04:37
Spain 03:12–04:34
Mauritania 03:43–04:32
Western Sahara 03:35–04:31
Portugal 03:14–04:29
Mali 03:56–04:31
The Canary Islands 03:23–04:27
The Contiguous United States 02:14–02:30
The Portuguese Azores 02:41–04:05
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 02:10–03:01
Melilla 03:34–04:35
Gibraltar 03:29–04:32
Madeira 03:16–04:22
The Savage Islands 03:23–04:23
Isla de Alborán 03:33–04:34
Islas Chafarinas 03:35–04:35

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) 16h05m20s 19°48'S Scorpius 2.6 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
04 Jun 2069 21 Apr 2076 Occultations of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) 15 Jun 2076 22 Dec 2087
06 Sep 2075 21 Apr 2076 Occultations 30 May 2076 19 Feb 2077

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:28
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
05:10


Waning Crescent

47%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:40 13:06 17:32
Venus 10:13 14:39 19:06
Moon 22:16 05:32 12:36
Mars 20:52 04:15 11:38
Jupiter 17:26 00:53 08:20
Saturn 13:09 18:41 00:13
All times shown in EST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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