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 Sub-Saharan Africa. 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 Cambridge.

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)
South Africa 19:47–22:01
Namibia 19:40–21:37
Mozambique 20:30–22:14
Madagascar 20:57–22:27
Botswana 19:58–21:54
Zambia 20:25–21:50
Angola 19:43–21:30
Zimbabwe 20:26–22:02
Malawi 20:55–22:04
Tanzania 21:19–22:03
Swaziland 20:27–22:00
Democratic Republic of the Congo 21:06–21:30
Mauritius 21:20–22:29
Reunion 21:17–22:27
Seychelles 21:30–22:29
Comoros 21:19–22:16
British Indian Ocean Territory 21:37–22:34
Mayotte 21:19–22:20
Saint Helena 18:42–20:04
Lesotho 20:17–21:50

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 17 Jun 2027 Occultations of Antares (Alpha Scorpii) 11 Aug 2027 10 May 2028
20 Jun 2027 20 Jun 2027 Occultations 17 Jul 2027 10 Sep 2027

The sky on 14 Jul 2027

The sky on 14 July 2027
Sunrise
05:16
Sunset
20:20
Twilight ends
22:27
Twilight begins
03:08

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

90%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 03:56 11:20 18:43
Venus 04:40 12:15 19:50
Moon 17:41 21:55 02:07
Mars 11:06 17:12 23:17
Jupiter 08:21 15:14 22:06
Saturn 00:26 06:59 13:32
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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