Moon-Mars occultation
Context: Indian skies could witness another celestial event, a crescent moon comes in between Earth and red planet Mars to result a rare celestial event visible to naked eye from earth.
The occultation begins as the moon hides the red planet looking like a shiny dot.
Occultation
- An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer.
- If the closer body does not entirely conceal the farther one, the event is called a
- Both transit and occultation may be referred to generally as occlusion; and if a shadow is cast onto the observer, it is called an
- The term occultation is most frequently used to describe those relatively frequent occasions when the Moon passes in front of a star during the course of its orbital motion around the Earth.
- The Moon or another celestial body can occult multiple celestial bodies at the same time.
- Because of its relatively large angular diameter the Moon, at any given time, occults an indeterminate number of stars and galaxies.
- However the Moon occulting (obscuring) two bright objects (e.g. two planets or a bright star and a planet), simultaneously is extremely rare and can be seen only from a small part of the world.
- A lunar eclipse is another example of an occultation, but the description is a little more complicated.
- When this happens, anybody on the dark side of the Earth can watch the moon pass into the Earth's shadow, so that the Earth is directly in between the Earth and the sun.
- This eclipse or occultation turns the moon red-brown because it catches the reflected light on the edge of Earth's atmosphere, where the wavelengths are longest.
- It should be emphasized that occultations don't only take place on Earth — they can take place anywhere in the universe. For example, the Apollo 12 astronauts flew through Earth's shadow and saw a solar eclipse on their way home from the moon in 1969.
- Occultations can also be artificially produced to take a look at certain phenomenon in detail.
- Perhaps the best-known use is blocking the light of the sun or a star to see what is nearby. Telescopes on Earth and in space regularly block the sun's light to observe the corona, the faint outer atmosphere of the sun that is otherwise blinded by the main part of the sun's disk.
1.png)
