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

Lunar occultation of Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Neptune

The Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation visible from eastern Russia, western Alaska, Japan and north-eastern China. 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 Neptune 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 Neptune 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 Neptune.

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)
Russia 08:19–10:19
Alaska 09:22–10:21
Japan 08:18–09:47
China 08:19–09:42

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Neptune 23h50m10s 2°28'S Pisces 7.9 0'02"

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
12 Nov 2024 12 Nov 2024 Occultations of Neptune 05 Jan 2025 11 Sep 2033
27 Nov 2024 27 Nov 2024 Occultations 15 Dec 2024 14 Jan 2025

The sky on 9 Dec 2024

The sky on 9 December 2024
Sunrise
06:37
Sunset
16:42
Twilight ends
18:10
Twilight begins
05:09

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

63%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:54 11:04 16:14
Venus 09:50 14:53 19:57
Moon 12:46 18:58 01:19
Mars 20:07 03:09 10:11
Jupiter 16:25 23:28 06:31
Saturn 11:51 17:31 23:11
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

07 Dec 2024  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
04 Jul 2025  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
23 Sep 2025  –  Neptune at opposition
10 Dec 2025  –  Neptune 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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