“Did you hear there will be an occultation?”
“An occul what?”
“An occultation! The Moon will go in front of Venus.”
“Oh, you mean an eclipse?”
“Well, yeah, it’s basically the same thing, but, for some reason, they use the odd word occultation. It means to hide or conceal.”
“What night?”
“It’s actually during the daytime.”
“So you won’t be able to see it then?”
“You can! Haven’t you seen the Moon in the daytime? We have seen Venus several times during the day.”
And so the conversation went.
The day came, Wednesday, June 17. At home during lunchtime, I used our GoTo telescope to locate the Moon. After lunch I took two telescopes to work and set them up in a grassy spot next to the parking lot.
Later a friend came in and said, “What’s with all the equipment out front? There must be something going on in the sky.”
I told him the Moon is going to go in front of Venus.
His response, “Oh, an eclipse!”
“Ah, yeah, an eclipse.”
For interest’s sake, and to keep from losing sight of the pair, I would go out every so often to line up the scopes and check the progress. I had left the GoTo scope at home for my wife and daughters to use. It was fun to watch the duo get closer together each time I checked.
Several people wanted to know what the scopes were all about. The Snap-on salesman asked, and I told him. We talked some about it; then he asked me, “So, which one is going to go in front of the other?”
I smiled and told him, “The Moon will go in front of the planet Venus.” I did not explain that for Venus to go in front of the Moon, Venus would have to be between us (the Earth) and the Moon. I probably should have.
At 3:45 p.m. several of us went out to watch. The Moon was only 11% illuminated in its waxing crescent phase (New Moon was just three days before), producing a nice crescent shape. Venus was 74% illuminated in its waning gibbous phase, looking like a ball with a quarter of it chopped off.
While we were watching, trying to guess when the event would start, two of us saw a jet go right across the Moon! At home, after Venus was behind the Moon, my daughter was using our solar scope and saw a jet go across the Sun. We hardly ever see this, and here we saw it twice within an hour.
One very interesting part of this occul—I mean, eclipse—is that it looked like the blue sky slowly nibbled away at the illuminated part of Venus. The planet disappeared behind the Moon’s “dark limb,” which looked like blue sky in the daylight. As Venus got closer to the crescent Moon, its leading edge started to flatten. This flattening progressed until there was just a thin slit of Venus left; then Venus disappeared! It took about thirty seconds from start to finish. That was a lot of fun to watch.
We went back to work. It was going to be about an hour and twenty minutes before Venus would reappear from behind the Moon’s bright limb.
The time got away from me! When I went out to see it reappear, I could not see the Moon! I scanned the sky in vain. All I could see was blue sky! It had moved a lot in over an hour! Finally a co-worker said “I see it!”
“Where?!!”
“Just above the big maple tree,” he said.
I had been looking too high. I finally spotted it, quickly got it in the telescope, looked in the eye piece, and saw the Moon with Venus right beside it with a hair line of sky between them! I just missed it!! If only I had found it thirty seconds sooner!
I watched the gap widen as the two moved slowly apart. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event for me, but at least I got to see the first half of the show! My wife and daughters paid better attention to the time. They went out earlier than I did and witnessed the reappearance.
That evening, one of my daughters said, “Look at them now!”
We all went to look. The pair was shining brightly, separated by about two Moon widths. One of us said, “It is much easier to go stargazing at night!”
It is, but we were glad we could watch this celestial sight in the daytime as well as at night.
On January 13, 2025, we saw the Moon-Mars occultation. It is hard to say which one was better. Both had aspects that made them very interesting to watch. One occurred during the day, and one at night. We are just glad to have witnessed both.
“This is my Father’s world,
And to my [watching eyes]
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.”
Not all music is heard; some is seen. We just need to take the time to hear and watch it, and praise God for it.
