Occulation Preoccupation
Bozeman, Montana
2022
Two nights ago, there was a lunar occulation (a.k.a. opposition) of the planet Mars. These happen about every couple of years but this years was a bit special as it was a full moon. Also, Mars was particularly close to the Earth, making it look brighter than normal. If you look closely at this photo, at about the 8 o’clock position on the moon, you can see Mars just before it disappeared behind the moon. This is a highly cropped image I took using a 100-400mm zoom lens zoomed to 400mm. There are of course many closer photos of the phenomenon available on the internet, taken through strong telescopes. I like this one which shows Mars just as it is reappearing on the opposite side of the moon. I didn’t bother to stay out or go out again to see the re-emergence of Mars–it was too dang cold out there!
Cool!!! I could only see Mars on my phone by zooming in a lot! 🙂
I can see it on my phone but then I knew specifically where to look and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought it was just a small speck of dandruff or something. Zooming in, I can see a somewhat blurry but obvious reddish-yellow disk.