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

Lunar occultation of Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Saturn
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The Moon will pass in front of Saturn, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including the Contiguous United States, eastern Canada, eastern Mexico and Cuba amongst others. 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.

The occultation will be visible from San Diego. It will begin with the disappearance of Saturn behind the Moon at 15:15 PST, though in daylight. Its reappearance will be visible at 16:03 PST, though in daylight.

Extreme caution is necessary when pointing binoculars or telescopes at the sky when the Sun is above the horizon, as even a momentary glance at the Sun through such an instrument can cause permanent blindness.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Saturn 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.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Saturn 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.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Saturn.

You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

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

Country Time span
(UTC)
The Contiguous United States 23:15–01:49
Canada 00:13–01:53
Mexico 23:08–01:02
Cuba 23:52–01:24
Guatemala 23:33–00:42
Honduras 23:51–00:35
Bahamas 00:08–01:37
Belize 23:41–00:46
Dominican Republic 00:53–01:25
Haiti 00:46–01:23
Cape Verde 01:42–02:33
The Canary Islands 01:34–02:29
Jamaica 00:37–00:58
The Portuguese Azores 01:26–02:17
Turks and Caicos Islands 00:41–01:36
Cayman Islands 00:12–01:03
El Salvador 23:58–00:10
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 01:02–01:51
Bermuda 00:41–02:04
Madeira 01:34–02:21
The Savage Islands 01:34–02:25

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.

At the time of the occultation, the Moon will be 6 days past new moon and will be 55% illuminated. Saturn will disappear behind the unilluminated side of the Moon and reappear from behind the illuminated side of the Moon.

The position of Saturn at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Saturn 04h26m40s 20°05'N Taurus -0.2 0'18"

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
28 Dec 2001 24 Jan 2002 Occultations of Saturn 20 Mar 2002 17 Sep 2024
28 Dec 2001 05 Feb 2002 Occultations 23 Feb 2002 19 Aug 2002

The sky on 5 Oct 2024

The sky on 5 October 2024
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
18:27
Twilight ends
19:49
Twilight begins
05:21

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

13%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:02 12:50 18:38
Venus 09:20 14:38 19:56
Moon 09:22 14:40 19:53
Mars 23:57 07:03 14:09
Jupiter 22:06 05:10 12:15
Saturn 17:09 22:50 04:31
All times shown in PDT.

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.

Related news

07 Feb 2002  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
11 Oct 2002  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
17 Dec 2002  –  Saturn at opposition
21 Feb 2003  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion

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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