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
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The Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Canada, the Contiguous United States, Alaska and Greenland 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 Uranus behind the Moon at 21:45 PDT in the eastern sky at an altitude of 25.2 degrees. Its reappearance will be visible at 22:36 PDT at an altitude of 35.9 degrees.

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)
Canada 05:06–07:18
The Contiguous United States 04:46–06:22
Alaska 05:17–06:41
Greenland 06:14–07:27
Mexico 04:43–05:33

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 94% illuminated. Uranus will disappear behind the illuminated side of the Moon and reappear from behind the unilluminated side of the Moon.

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Uranus 03h01m20s 16°44'N Aries 5.7 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 14 Sep 2022 Occultations of Uranus 08 Nov 2022 29 Sep 2029
13 Jun 2022 03 Oct 2022 Occultations 27 Oct 2022 08 Dec 2022

The sky on 11 Oct 2022

The sky on 11 October 2022
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
18:20
Twilight ends
19:42
Twilight begins
05:25

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

91%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:26 11:32 17:39
Venus 06:34 12:25 18:15
Moon 19:01 01:44 08:35
Mars 21:51 04:57 12:03
Jupiter 17:32 23:33 05:33
Saturn 15:31 20:50 02:09
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

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