Photo credit: Andrew McCarthy
Many were able to witness the rare lunar occultation of Mars earlier this week, including astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy. This celestial phenomenon occurs when one celestial body (Mars) seemingly disappears or hides behind another (Moon). The image you see above is the result of stacking thousands of images to average out the atmospheric turbulence as well as eliminate noise.
I got it! Mars reappearing after being temporarily hidden by the moon. I got a ton of footage, I'm going to clean it up and share images soon! pic.twitter.com/xdXVZLWUzN
— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) December 8, 2022
Due to the field of view being so narrow, McCarthy filled in the surrounding area by capturing more photos of the Moon after Mars cleared the lunar limb. These images were then assembled into the final image as a high-resolution mosaic. One thing to note is that you’re not seeing the Moon’s thin atmosphere, but rather just moonlight scattering.
- Quick and easy no-tool setup
- Permanently mounted StarPointer
- Erect image optics - Ideal for terrestrial and astronomical use
That’s actually moonlight scattering off of our atmosphere! The moons atmosphere is essentially undetectable from earth. We first detected it at the start of the Apollo program using surface and orbital probes,” said McCarthy.
