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

Lunar occultation of Beta Tauri

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Elnath

The Moon will pass in front of Beta Tauri (Elnath), creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe 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 Beta Tauri (Elnath) 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 Beta Tauri (Elnath) 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)
South Africa 22:44–00:27
Namibia 22:43–00:01
Botswana 22:54–00:14
Zimbabwe 23:18–00:19
Mozambique 23:20–00:28
Madagascar 23:56–00:38
Zambia 23:19–23:58
Angola 23:10–23:48
Swaziland 23:16–00:26
Saint Helena 22:17–23:10
Lesotho 23:06–00:18

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 Beta Tauri (Elnath) at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Beta Tauri (Elnath) 05h26m10s 28°36'N Taurus 1.7 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
14 Sep 2025 29 Oct 2026 Occultations of Beta Tauri (Elnath) 23 Dec 2026 22 Oct 2043
06 Oct 2026 13 Nov 2026 Occultations 30 Nov 2026 20 Jun 2027

The sky on 25 Nov 2026

The sky on 25 November 2026
Sunrise
06:25
Sunset
16:42
Twilight ends
18:09
Twilight begins
04:58

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

94%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:55 10:20 15:45
Venus 03:24 09:03 14:43
Moon 16:39 00:14 07:52
Mars 23:01 05:40 12:19
Jupiter 22:46 05:25 12:03
Saturn 13:56 20:00 02:05
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.

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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