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

Lunar occultation of Delta Scorpii

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Dschubba

The Moon will pass in front of Delta Scorpii (Dschubba), creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and southern Chile amongst others.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from San Diego, though a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) 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 of the contours, the Moon does not pass in front of Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair may be visible.

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)
Antarctica 09:39–23:00
Australia 08:04–23:06
New Zealand 08:55–08:11
Chile 10:46–07:37
Tasmania 08:36–20:47
Argentina 10:47–08:11
New Caledonia 08:19–15:49
Papua New Guinea 08:09–15:57
Lord Howe Island 08:25–09:27
Macquarie Island 08:43–10:03
Norfolk Island 08:32–09:23

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 Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) 16h00m20s 22°37'S Scorpius 2.3 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
13 Jun 2022 07 May 2023 Occultations of Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) 30 Jun 2023 20 Apr 2030
17 May 2023 17 May 2023 Occultations 30 Jun 2023 25 Aug 2023

The sky on 03 Jun 2023

The sky on 03 June 2023
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:32
Twilight begins
03:58

15-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:28 11:09 17:50
Venus 08:55 16:02 23:09
Moon 19:52 00:51 05:50
Mars 09:46 16:42 23:38
Jupiter 03:34 10:08 16:41
Saturn 01:02 06:37 12:13
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.

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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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
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