Mars occulted by the Moon: images (8 Dec. 2022)
On the very night of its opposition Mars, the Red Planet, was occulted by the Moon. We covered this event, sharing it live with the community.
The 8 Dec. 2022 occultation of Mars by the Moon: ingress as seen from Rome.This sequence uses the best Moon and Mars images collected and – the real path of the occultation, which was partly affected by the clouds.
A lunar occultation of a bright planet is, for sure a rare sight. If you also want that the involved planet is at its best observing conditions, like at opposition, then the event is just unique.
This happened for the 8 Dec. 2022 lunar occultation of Mars: that night the Red Planet was at opposition and the Moon, being full, was at opposition, too. The event was visible from Rome, Italy, at the end of the night, so we scheduled a live feed to bring the show to everyone interested.
We were 50% lucky: we could cover the beginning of the occultation, with Mars disappearing behind the lunar disk under increasing cloudy coverage, but we missed the end of the event because of the weather.
Above is a sequence we recreated in post-production, while below we share a sample of only marginally processed images.
The 8 Dec. 2022 occultation of Mars by the Moon: a sequence.
Below you can find the podcast from our live feed:
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