The Moon Eclipse Mars Will Happen This Week

VIVA – The moon eclipse Mars will happen this week, exactly on Monday night, January 30, 2023. During this phenomenon, Mars is going to disappear from the outlook behind the moon or known as moon occultation. It will happen at 8:30 pm PST or Tuesday at 11.30 am in Western Indonesian Time.

The central and northern United States and southern Canada will be treated to a view of an enlarged gibbous moon below Mars. As much as 78 percent of the Moon will cover Mars. But a few hours later, the planet will reappear on the other side of the Moon.

While parts of California, the Southern Rocky Mountains, and the Southwest Desert as well as most of Texas and Oklahoma, the Deep South including South Georgia and Florida will be covered as the moon passes in front of Mars, causing an occultation.

This event occurs nearly eight weeks after the moon occulted Mars across much of North America (except parts of the Southeast United States and the Atlantic Seaboard. On this occasion, the moon was fully illuminated while Mars was in opposition to the sun and shone at a dazzling magnitude of nearly -2.

For this upcoming game of hide-and-seek, however, the moon will be not quite so bright (74% illuminated) and neither will Mars. Having retreated 29.63 million miles (47.68 million km) farther away from Earth since its December lunar encounter, Mars now appears less than one-quarter as bright.

Meanwhile, the moon will shine at a magnitude of -0.3, it still ranks as a brilliant object. Among the stars, only Sirius and Canopus shine brighter to even casual viewers looking up toward the moon on this particular night.

For most parts of the country, the occultation, or closest approach of the moon relative to Mars, will occur high in the sky, though in the Northeast U.S. and Atlantic Canada, the closest approach between the moon and Mars will come after local midnight (early Tuesday morning, Jan. 31) with both objects hovering only about a quarter of a way up above the west-northwest horizon.

The last lunar occultation of Mars took place on December 7, 2022, wowing skywatchers, many of whom managed to take many stunning photos. Griffith Observatory also released beautiful footage of the previous occultation, giving an idea of what to expect tonight.