ROANOKE, Va. – It won’t quite be an eclipse, but the lunar occultation Thursday night should be a pretty cool sight to see!
This will happen when the moon passes in front of Antares, which is the brightest star in the Scorpius constellation.
Tony Rice, an ambassador to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says this will give us a sense of just how close the moon is to us (relatively speaking).
It’s expected that Antares will seemingly disappear into the dark side of the moon around 10:58 p.m. Thursday.
It will re-remerge around 11:38 p.m., as the moon continues its movement across our night sky.
All of this will take place in the southwestern sky. You can see this with the naked eye, though you may want to give your eyes time to adjust to the night sky.
If you have any pictures of this lunar occultation, we’d love to see them!