Mars Attacks our Moon!

• see also:
  • Mars Attacks
  • compare this with the July 2003 Florida occultation of Mars
  • occultations

well...not really...just the moon almost passing in front of Mars in a similar way to a solar eclipse, but this event seen as a grazing occultation in Melbourne with Mars so big is extremely rare!

The region from which an occultation was seen is limited by a grazing occultation of Mars at the north limb of the Moon. This occurred along a band some 50 km wide from Melbourne, through Canberra to Wollongong just south of Sydney. Areas to the south saw a full occultation.

note that the apparent size of Mars is approx. 75-100 x smaller than the moon

• the moon is approx. 400,000km from earth and has a diameter of 3,480km
• mars is approx. 60 million km from earth (150x further away) and has a diameter of 6,760km (only twice as big)

here are my pics of this event taken with a Canon S30 digital camera and a 10" Newtonian telescope on 7th October 2003:

0:15am camera zoom without telescope - getting closer!
2:38am - damn that's close!!
2:39 am - note how much the moon moved since last photo one minute earlier
2:52 am moving away