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

The Moon will pass in front of Saturn, creating a lunar occultation visible from Africa. 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 Seattle.

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)
Niger 03:29–21:22
Mali 03:48–21:09
Nigeria 00:20–03:07
Chad 00:17–03:28
Mauritania 03:34–20:51
Democratic Republic of the Congo 00:20–03:42
Algeria 02:52–21:05
Cameroon 00:18–03:18
Central African Republic 00:17–03:37
Republic of the Congo 00:23–03:21
Ivory Coast 04:00–21:02
Burkina Faso 04:14–21:12
Gabon 00:28–03:16
Guinea 03:38–20:41
Ghana 04:20–21:13
Senegal 03:30–20:27
Libya 00:21–21:13
Angola 00:44–03:20
Benin 03:39–21:17
Liberia 03:50–21:27
Sierra Leone 03:44–21:24
Togo 03:38–21:15
Guinea-Bissau 03:34–21:16
Equatorial Guinea 00:31–03:11
Gambia 03:33–22:48
Western Sahara 03:40–20:32
Cape Verde 03:12–21:12
Sao Tome and Principe 04:12–03:06
Brazil 06:23–19:44
Saint Helena 04:09–19:49

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Saturn 15h03m50s 15°07'S Libra 0.4 0'16"

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
21 Feb 2002 04 Aug 2014 Occultations of Saturn 28 Sep 2014 17 Sep 2024
25 May 2013 14 Aug 2014 Occultations 11 Sep 2014 11 Sep 2014

The sky on 30 Sep 2023

The sky on 30 September 2023
Sunrise
07:04
Sunset
18:51
Twilight ends
20:34
Twilight begins
05:20

15-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

95%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:43 12:07 18:31
Venus 03:17 10:10 17:02
Moon 19:09 01:47 08:42
Mars 08:27 13:53 19:20
Jupiter 20:11 03:22 10:32
Saturn 17:39 22:45 03:52
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

10 May 2014  –  Saturn at opposition
22 May 2015  –  Saturn at opposition
02 Jun 2016  –  Saturn at opposition
15 Jun 2017  –  Saturn at opposition

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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