Parts of the Arab world are witnessing this morning, Sunday, September 6, 2020, a rare phenomenon, as the moon moves in front of Mars and temporarily blocks it in a phenomenon called occultation, and the event can be followed with the naked eye, binoculars or telescope.
The phenomenon of the occultation of Mars has been observed in the Kingdom of Morocco and the Republic of Mauritania before sunrise, in addition to central South America.
In the rest of the Arab regions, the event is observed only as a coupling between the moon and Mars, as it will separate them about one degree before sunrise, but occultation will not be seen due to its occurrence in the daytime sky in these areas, as sunlight blurs the natural lights in the dome of the sky.
Mars will disappear behind the illuminated part of the moon’s disk and will reappear from the dark side, during this event the moon will be in a diminishing humpback phase and lit by 87.5%, while the luminosity of Mars reaches (-1.8), and unlike the star’s responses, where the star suddenly disappears, the protests of the planets They are slow, and on Sunday dawn it will take several seconds for the moon to fully cover Mars and a similar period of time when it reappears.
Observers in the Mauritanian city of Nouakchott were able to observe the phenomenon with the beginning of the partial occultation of Mars at (04:46:53 am) – local time – followed by that total occultation at (04:47:57 am) and the planet remained behind the moon until it returned To appear from (the bottom of the moon in relation to the observer) and the total occultation ends at (06:21:53 AM) followed by the end of the partial occultation (06:22:52 AM).
In addition to observing the phenomenon in several Moroccan regions, in the city of Rabat, partial occultation will begin – according to local time – at (06:34:18 AM), followed by total occultation at (06:35:36 AM), and the planet will reappear from the bottom of the moon for the observer simultaneously With sunrise.
In general, Mars and the Moon will appear close to each other, and this is only on the dome of the sky because they are located along the same line of sight, as seen from the Earth, so the moon is at a distance of 405.483 km, while Mars is further at a distance of 71 million km at the present time.
Occultation is an astronomical event that occurs when a celestial body disappears by another celestial body passing between it and the observer. Usually the term occlusion is used when the moon passes in front of one of the stars or planets located in the zodiac, and the occultation can only be seen from a small part of the surface of the earth because the moon is much closer to The earth is one of the other celestial bodies, so its exact position in the sky varies depending on your location on the earth, as it is seen from two points on the sides of the earth by two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.
This means that if the moon is aligned to pass in front of a planet or a star for an observer on one side of the earth, it will appear two degrees away from that object on the other side of the earth, so for the rest of the world, the moon will appear to pass near the red planet only.
The occultations of bright stars and planets usually occur several times a year, and many occultations of the same body often cluster in successive months, since the moon follows roughly the same path across the sky every month, and the series of protests ends a few months later, when the path of the moon changes through The sky.
The planet Mars is considered a major target of interest in 2020, as it will be located at the closest meeting and the closest distance to Earth in October, which means that this summer was the launch season for spacecraft, as several missions are now traveling to the Red Planet, including the Mars 2020 Rover. For NASA, China’s first orbiter and rover, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe
It is worth noting that there are five responses to Mars in the year 2020, but the event of September 6 is the only event witnessed in parts of the Arab world.
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