NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2025 Jun 29, 12:13 -0700
If you're hanging out with the tortoises in the Galapagos Islands tonight, you will see Mars occulted (eclipsed) by the Moon. Elsewhere, especially in North and South America, Mars will be quite close to the Moon in the sky, and the motion of the Moon during an hour or two will be relatively obvious, showing off the Moon's value as a "natural chronometer". Unlike some other recent Moon-Mars conjunctions, Mars, even though it's on the far side of its orbit, should be plainly visible next to the Moon since the Moon is only about 24% illuminated tonight. The Moon's geocentric angular distance from the Sun at 03:54:40 UT will be almost exactly 60°. At that angle the fraction illumination is exactly 25%. It's a "quarter full" Moon, but, just to keep things confusing :), this is not the "First Quarter" Moon. That's a few days from now...
Frank Reed
