The most recent lunar occultation of Mars, which was visible from the United States, occurred on December 7, 2022. A handful of these events occur every few years around each opposition on Mars, but they are usually only visible from a small portion of the earth, often all over the world. the ocean or in the polar regions. The next lunar occultation of Mars visible in most of the United States will occur on the night of February 4-5, 2042. Similar occultations of Mars in 2035, 2038 and 2039 are visible in narrow parts of South Florida and the Pacific Northwest. .
This photo was taken with a handheld Canon 80D and a 600mm lens. Settings were 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 400. The image was cropped and lightly edited in Adobe Lightroom.
The moon also periodically covers Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and the more distant planets of the solar system. A good source on lunar occultations is In-The-Sky.org, which lists events where the moon will block a planet or a bright star. Be sure to choose your location in the top right corner of the page and switch from year to year to plan future viewing opportunities.
It can be breathtaking and humbling to watch these types of events. In 2012 I was lucky enough to observe the transit of Venus in front of the Sun, something that only happens twice every 121 years.
Seeing Mars, twice the size of the moon, rising above the lunar horizon like a rusty BB pellet next to a dusty volleyball perfectly illustrated the scale and grandeur of the solar system. Likewise, seeing Venus dwarfed by the Sun was a revealing moment. The worlds that accompany the Earth around the Sun vary in size, shape, color and composition.
At a glance, an observer can see the barren, airless lunar surface and a cold, desert planet that once harbored rivers, lakes and possibly life, while standing on our own planet, an oasis in the cosmos. One thing that ties them all together is humanity's quest for exploration. Today, robots operate on or around the moon and Mars. Governments and private companies are preparing to return astronauts to the moon's surface within a few years, then send human expeditions to the red planet.
Plans to land astronauts on the moon are already in motion, but significant financial and technological obstacles remain for a crew mission to put humans on Mars. But for a brief moment Monday evening, it looked like there was a direct path.
