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

Lunar occultation of Spica

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Spica

The Moon will pass in front of Spica (Alpha Virginis), creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia 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.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Washington.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Spica (Alpha Virginis) 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 Spica (Alpha Virginis) 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)
Brazil 06:01–08:56
Argentina 06:39–08:35
Peru 05:43–07:54
Bolivia 06:16–08:24
Colombia 05:46–07:23
Paraguay 06:45–08:34
Chile 06:24–08:04
Mexico 05:11–06:02
Ecuador 05:22–07:10
Uruguay 07:13–08:31
Panama 05:42–06:31
Nicaragua 05:40–06:14
Costa Rica 05:38–06:26
Guatemala 05:31–06:04
El Salvador 05:35–06:05
Honduras 05:42–06:04
Clipperton Island 05:06–06:07

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 Spica (Alpha Virginis) at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Spica (Alpha Virginis) 13h25m10s 11°09'S Virgo 1.1 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
18 Feb 2006 02 Feb 2013 Occultations of Spica (Alpha Virginis) 28 Mar 2013 14 Jul 2024
13 Aug 2012 18 Feb 2013 Occultations 04 Mar 2013 31 Mar 2013

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
07:22
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:21
Twilight begins
05:54

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

84%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:55 14:38 21:20
Venus 06:47 12:34 18:22
Moon 22:26 03:44 08:54
Mars 06:04 11:33 17:02
Jupiter 09:10 16:03 22:56
Saturn 06:29 12:06 17:44
All times shown in MDT.

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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Washington

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Longitude:
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37.13°N
113.51°W
MDT

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