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

Lunar occultation of Antares

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Antares

The Moon will pass in front of Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Argentina, eastern Australia, Chile and New Zealand 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 Ashburn.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Antares (Alpha Scorpii) 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 Antares (Alpha Scorpii) 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)
Argentina 10:00–11:21
Australia 07:11–08:14
Chile 09:57–11:21
New Zealand 07:18–08:55
Falkland Islands 10:06–10:46
Fiji 07:07–07:59
Tasmania 07:50–08:12
New Caledonia 07:03–08:06
Vanuatu 07:00–08:01
Solomon Islands 06:59–07:49
Tonga 07:17–08:02
Lord Howe Island 07:20–08:16
Norfolk Island 07:13–08:17
Antarctica 09:47–10:00

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 Antares (Alpha Scorpii) at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Antares (Alpha Scorpii) 16h29m20s 26°25'S Scorpius 1.1 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
24 May 2024 04 May 2026 Occultations of Antares (Alpha Scorpii) 27 Jun 2026 10 May 2028
26 Apr 2026 23 May 2026 Occultations 03 Jun 2026 17 Jun 2026

The sky on 31 May 2026

The sky on 31 May 2026
Sunrise
05:43
Sunset
20:28
Twilight ends
22:24
Twilight begins
03:48

15-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:49 14:24 21:59
Venus 08:06 15:37 23:07
Moon 20:19 00:54 05:26
Mars 04:11 11:01 17:50
Jupiter 08:55 16:14 23:33
Saturn 03:09 09:20 15:32
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

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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