Mumbai: On Saturday evening, Mumbaikars were treated to a celestial spectacle, the moon Mars occultation. Nasa says occultation is a phenomena when one object passes in front of another that is smaller. Space Geeks Mumbai, which focuses on space and astronomy, captured the drama by attaching a mobile camera to an eight-inch telescope and streamed it live in its YouTube channel. Chintamani Pai, co-founder of Space Geeks, said in Mumbai, Mars went behind the moon at 5.31pm and reappeared as a red dot in the night sky at 7.19pm.
He explained that occultation takes place “due to periodic motion of moon around Earth, and also Earth and Mars around sun.’’ It generally takes place twice a year. The occultation was mainly over some Asian countries covering a large part of India.
While most star-struck people observed the event on YouTube at home, few tried to watch it directly. The moon covered Mars completely for around 90 minutes. Pai said that sometimes occultation can have an impact on communications, with those spacecraft orbiting Mars or which have landed on Red Planet.
The event comes as the moon and Mars are attracting public attention because of two major space mission; Nasa’s Artermis programme aims to land the first woman and man on the south pole region of the moon by 2024, and Nasa’s Perseverance rover with the Ingenuity helicopter which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18/19.