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, southern Argentina, southern Chile and Falkland Islands 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 Fairfield.

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 the contours, the Moon will 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 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)
Antarctica 04:02–06:03
Argentina 05:18–06:12
Chile 05:16–06:09
Falkland Islands 05:23–06:13
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 05:16–06:09

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
21 Dec 2022 23 Jun 2029 Occultations of Delta Scorpii (Dschubba) 17 Aug 2029 20 Apr 2030
31 Jul 2028 23 Jun 2029 Occultations 17 Aug 2029 29 Sep 2029

The sky on 21 Jul 2029

The sky on 21 July 2029
Sunrise
05:35
Sunset
20:19
Twilight ends
22:17
Twilight begins
03:36

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

82%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:39 13:52 21:05
Venus 08:13 15:03 21:53
Moon 17:14 21:46 02:17
Mars 12:32 18:06 23:40
Jupiter 12:25 18:05 23:46
Saturn 01:15 08:18 15:21
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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