Talk:Occultation/Archive 1

beautiful occultations
I think we should highlight those occultations that are beautiful to watch (with the naked eye). A bright planet like Venus being occulted by the Moon it worth throwing a party. For example the Venus occulatation by the Moon on 16 may 2010 will be marvellous to watch from Sumatra. More here, 2010 dates: Mars at dusk 6dec2010 in midwestusa, Venus at dusk Liberia 5nov2010.) Y23 (talk) 13:10, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Picture of Moon and Jupiter has wrong date
The picture showing the occultation of Jupiter by the Moon shows the date to be 7 June 2005. This cannot be, as on that date Jupiter was in Virgo while the Moon was a very thin slightly waxing phase, situated near the Sun and Mercury in Taurus. As such, they were not near each other then and the date needs readjusting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.126.232 (talk) 14:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

List of planetary occultations of stars brighter than 6 mag between 1800 and 2100
List of all planetary occultations of stars brighter than 6 mag between 1800 and 2100. The number behind the name of the star shows its brightness, then follows its right ascension and its declination (both in actual equinox)

Occultations caused by Venus between 1800 and 2100

Occultations caused by Mars between 1800 and 2100

Occultations caused by Jupiter between 1800 and 2100

Occultations caused by Saturn between 1800 and 2100

Occultations caused by Uranus between 1800 and 2100

Occultations caused by Neptune between 1800 and 2100

Can the moon occult Pollux?
Can the moon occult Pollux?

At present, no. However, I believe it did in the past and will do so again in the future. The effect which makes this possible is Planetary Precession, which is the long-term change of the plane of the ecliptic, relative to a fixed frame of reference. This means that the ecliptic latitude of Pollux will vary over time. If it reduces to less than the inclination of the Moon's orbit (and allowing for other factors such as parallax and the apparent angular radius of the moon), then occultations of Pollux will be possible. --Portnadler 12:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What is the difference between transit and occultation?
If a planet goes in front of Sun, but not "annular eclipse" but "partial eclipse", can we call it transit? can we call it occultation? or partial occulation?

As I understand it, an occultation is when the foreground body's apparent diameter is larger than that of the background body – a transit is when the foreground body appears smaller than the background body. Hence, an annular solar eclipse is a special case of a transit, and a total solar eclipse is a special case of an occultation. --Portnadler 18:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Between transit and occultation
The text says "Compared to astronomical transits and eclipses, an occultation is said to occur when the nearer object appears larger and completely hides the more distant object. In contrast, the word transit refers to cases where the nearer object appears considerably smaller in apparent size than the more distant object, such as transit of Mercury or Venus across the Sun's disk."

This leaves a gap between transits ("considerably smaller") and occultations ("larger"). What is it when the nearer object is roughly the same size, or smaller, but not considerably so? Either the text is incorrect, or there is a word for the middling case, or it's such a rare situation that there is no term for it. 65.241.152.139 00:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The only such 'middling' case commonly visible from Earth is an annular eclipse of the sun. Personally, I would consider this to be a special case of a transit, because the foreground object is smaller than the background object. I don't think we need to worry about degrees of 'considerableness'. --Portnadler 11:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No citation?
Why has the author of this article not given a single citation? This leads me (A casual reader) to believe that the definition of Occulation is based upon their own interpretation, and not upon the research of those considered to be credible in the field of astronomy. — Sbauman487 06:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Occultations by the Moon
Google "occultation saturn moon 2007" locates  which includes "A series of occultations by the Moon over Saturn began on 2006 DEC 10 and will continue every 27.3 days until 2007 OCT 07." If that's right, it seems wrong to mention only one.

82.163.24.100 13:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Javascript
There is some dodgy Javascript in this article. Both IE7 and Firefox are throwing back errors. Doyley Talk 11:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Occultation implies eclipse?
It's stated very strongly in the article that every time an occultation occurs (body X moves between a viewer and body Y, i.e. Y-X-viewer arrangement), an eclipse occurs (body X moves into the shadow of body Y, i.e. X-Y-Sun arrangement). Is this necessarily true? To give an example, consider a comet travelling into the inner solar system. There may come a moment when our view of that comet is blocked by the moon. But the comet is still in full sunlight. Is the argument dependent on the orbits being fully concentric? Rpresser (talk) 18:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I misread the article: it says eclipse entails occultation, not the other way around. And I agree this is true, given the specialized meaning of eclipse as "blocks the sun's light". I'd wager, though, that once the word meant "hides from view" and the more specific meaning was only given to distinguish it from transit and occult -- i.e., to give single words to the different kinds of occurrences. Rpresser (talk) 18:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I've updated the section to the best of my understanding based on looking through various NASA sites (nothing special about NASA as an authority, but they have a bunch of easily accessible material). I've also checked a few dictionaries.  This whole thing about eclipse referring to a body going into shadow is just ... odd.  I have no idea where it comes from.  Perhaps it was current in some technical sense at some earlier time?
 * There are a couple of other cases that could be mentioned: Shadow transits, where the shadow of a body passes across another (which the previous text had insisted was an eclipse) and eclipsing binaries, where one star passes in front of another and nothing is shadowed. --Dmh (talk) 02:45, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I was in a bit of a hurry writing that. I meant "This whole thing about eclipse referring only to a body going into shadow (and of any shadow cast on a body being an eclipse) ..." --Dmh (talk) 22:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

References for observations by Chinese astronomers and Gervase of Canterbury
This Google books search turns up a couple of editions of Gervase's chronicle in the original latin. The passage of interest is:


 * Idus Septembris, nocte media, duo planetae sic conjungi videbantur, ut quasi una cademque stella fuissent appararet; sed ilico abinvicem separati sunt.

My Latin is not good at all, but roughly: "Ides of September, midnight, two planets appeared conjoined, looking almost like a [something] star, then immediately separated." --Dmh (talk) 17:07, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


 * And here's a table from a Harvard paper using Chinese astronomical records to confirm models of planetary motion, showing the Mars-Jupiter event (Julian date 2148655).


 * Not sure how best to cite these in the article. --Dmh (talk) 23:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, so it wasn't that hard. The cite for the astronomy journal is a bit garbled, though. --Dmh (talk) 23:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You need to stop talking to yourself so much --Dmh (talk) 23:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

can anyone tell me the list of jupiter occulations and inner planets farthest away from earth
eg in dec 2019\jan 2020 jupiter will occult earth and all the inner planets will be away from earth(atleast not near the vicinity)

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=1000&vbody=1001&month=1&day=4&year=2020&hour=00&minute=00&fovmul=1&rfov=10&bfov=30&porbs=1&showsc=1

can anyone give me the list of jupiter occulation from 2000-2100 and also is there anyway to find out a planetary alignment with jupiter occultation and all the inner planets away from earth?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.158.18 (talk) 13:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Table of occultations may need revision
I have tested the table of occultations given in the main page (not the large one above) and have corrected some mistakes. However, there are still some inconsistencies between the results I obtain with my library (JPARSEC, check http://conga.oan.es/~alonso/doku.php?id=jparsec) and the results presented in Wikipedia, which have NO CITATION AT ALL. I use the Sky Master 2000 version 5 catalog (Myers 2006) and very precise up-to-date and well documented reduction algorithms (IAU 2006 resolutions).

I cannot reproduce the occultations on years 1837, 1843, 1937, and 1940 (some historical record to support those results?), neither the next predicted occultations on 2015 and 2069. Dates and times are fine, but by a few arcseconds the planet will not produce an occultation. The rest of them are fine.

Some comments/answers ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.164.44.251 (talk) 10:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Moon occultation of Venus
On this image it appears like Venus is behind the Moon but still seen. Is this possible? I have only rotated the original image and drawn the circle. Soerfm (talk) 14:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Due to craters, valleys, mountains, and diffraction I would say yes. -- Kheider (talk) 01:16, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Venus occultation of Mars
"An occultation of Mars by Venus on 3 October 1590 was observed by the German astronomer Michael Maestlin at Heidelberg.[2]"

Running the simulation Stellarium (v.11.1) shows that the alignment took place October 12th, not on the 3rd, at approximately 2100 hours local time and was only partial from the noted location in Germany. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.76.32.211 (talk) 01:09, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not sure Stellarium is accurate enough to run this simulation 400 years into the past. But also I have not seen the Sky & Telescope article. The statement was added on 19 October 2005. A quick look at text output with Horizons suggests that it occurred around 1590-Oct-13 04:30 UT as seen from Heidelberg-Konigstuhl. I suspect the original editor meant 13 Oct. Good catch, I am going to update the article. -- Kheider (talk) 01:19, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

You can simulate the event using a library called JPARSEC (see previous post). It is far more accurate than Stellarium, since this software does not correct planetary positions by certain critical effects like light-time, and uses old algorithms for planetary ephemerides. Strictly speaking it was not an occultation. Maximum at 04:50 UTC assuming TT-UT1 = 123.5s for that date (05:50 LT). Direct link for the interactive simulation (Java 1.6 required) is http://conga.oan.es/~alonso/servidorEfem/Sky.html?loc=Heidelberg&exec=true&object=Mars&year=1590&month=10&day=13&hour=5&minute=50&telescope=Schmidt-Cassegrain%2080cm%20f/10. First execution could need a few minutes to complete data download. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.34.243.33 (talk) 12:13, 16 August 2012 (UTC)