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

Lunar occultation of Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Uranus

The Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Fiji, Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga 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 San Diego.

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

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)
Fiji 07:15–08:27
Samoa 07:42–08:29
American Samoa 07:42–08:29
Tonga 07:24–08:29
Niue 07:30–08:30
Wallis and Futuna 07:38–08:27
New Zealand 07:01–08:16
Tuvalu 07:54–08:16

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Uranus 02h36m30s 14°54'N Aries 5.8 0'03"

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
11 Sep 2014 07 Feb 2022 Occultations of Uranus 03 Apr 2022 12 Oct 2022
03 Nov 2021 26 Feb 2022 Occultations 23 Mar 2022 19 Apr 2022

The sky on 6 Mar 2022

The sky on 6 March 2022
Sunrise
06:08
Sunset
17:49
Twilight ends
19:11
Twilight begins
04:46

4-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

25%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:18 10:41 16:04
Venus 03:38 08:57 14:15
Moon 08:31 15:12 22:02
Mars 03:55 09:01 14:06
Jupiter 06:11 11:56 17:41
Saturn 04:57 10:18 15:38
All times shown in PST.

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

18 Jan 2022  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
24 Aug 2022  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
09 Nov 2022  –  Uranus at opposition
22 Jan 2023  –  Uranus 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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