Although occultations can occur in a variety of ways, the heavenly body most often involved is our moon which inevitably will occult (or eclipse) background stars, other planets as well as asteroids. The study of occultations is important, for example, for the study of the moon's limb and its profile thanks to the grazing of lunar features such as mountains.

What is perhaps more interesting but not as frequent is occultations involving the moon and one of the planets. Typically the planets involved are Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Due to the great magnitude difference between the moon (any phase) and any of these planets, the photography of these events can be challenging.

Without doubt, the most stunning example of the moon occulting another body is that involving the sun which, of course, leads to a solar eclipse. This special example of an occultation is available elsewhere on this site.

Note: The setting two-day old Moon was only 7.3° above the horizon during ingress and which made the observation and imaging of egress 48 minutes thereafter impossible due to the fact the Moon was 2° below the horizon. Mars was characterized with an apparent diameter of only 3.77 arc-seconds, a magnitude of +1.8 and a phase of 97.8% whereas the waxing 2-day old crescent Moon was at magnitude -6.7 and with a phase of only 6.2%. The time series depicted vertically in the mosaic below represents exposures spaced five minutes apart.