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occultation
Sign in to savethumb|200px|In this July 1997 still frame captured from video, the bright star Aldebaran has just reappeared on the dark limb of the waning crescent moon in this predawn occultation.
An occultation occurs when one celestial object passes in front of another and blocks its light from view, such as when the moon moves in front of a star. Astronomers observe occultations because they provide opportunities to study the positions and movements of celestial bodies and gather precise data about objects in space.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- astronomical phenomenon
- Subclass of
- syzygy
- Image
- Dione Rhea Occultation.jpg
Show 4 more facts
- Commons category
- Occultation
- different from
- auscultation
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
via Wikidata · CC0
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
12 sectionsContents
- Occultations by the Moon
- Occultation by planets
- {{anchor|Occultations by asteroids}} Occultations by smaller bodies
- Examples
- Asteroids
- Distant objects
- Double occultations
- Artificial occultations
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|200px|In this July 1997 still frame captured from video, the bright star Aldebaran has just reappeared on the dark limb of the waning crescent moon in this predawn occultation.
An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks from view (occults) an object in the background. In this general sense, occultation applies to the visual scene observed from low-flying aircraft (or computer-generated imagery) when foreground objects obscure distant objects dynamically, as the scene changes over time.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “occultation” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.