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

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 Oceania, Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. 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 Ashburn.

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.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

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)
Fiji 10:06–10:34
French Polynesia 10:03–11:39
Kiribati 09:41–10:38
Samoa 09:55–10:45
Tonga 10:08–10:42
American Samoa 09:55–10:48
Cook Islands 09:50–11:08
Niue 10:06–10:48
Tuvalu 09:47–10:36
Wallis and Futuna 09:56–10:40
Kingman Reef 09:45–10:25
Palmyra Atoll 09:44–10:26
Pitcairn 10:46–12:06
Baker Island 09:38–10:34
Howland Island 09:37–10:33
Jarvis Island 09:44–10:40
Tokelau 09:46–10:42

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
22 Sep 2020 05 Mar 2021 Occultations of Beta1 Scorpii (Acrab) 28 Apr 2021 09 Jan 2032
12 Dec 2020 08 Mar 2021 Occultations 04 Apr 2021 25 Jun 2021

The sky on 1 Apr 2021

The sky on 1 April 2021
Sunrise
06:52
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:05
Twilight begins
05:20

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

76%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:25 12:15 18:05
Venus 07:03 13:20 19:36
Moon 23:17 04:27 09:29
Mars 09:59 17:29 00:58
Jupiter 04:56 10:11 15:26
Saturn 04:22 09:24 14:26
All times shown in EDT.

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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Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

Color scheme