People in the United States and Canada will be treated to a spectacle in the night sky starting this Tuesday. For a short time, the star Aldebaran will appear to be near the Moon. The Moon will pass in front of Aldebaran and the star will seem to graze it.
The areas that will be covered by this event would be the southern and eastern United States and part of eastern Canada, according to Space.com. The event will be from October 18-19 and should be viewable by even the smallest telescopes, as long as weather permits.
Phys Org describes how the event will take place, with the Moon rising and Aldebaran will approach the Moon from its sunlit side. The star would then slowly graze the moon as it passes over it from its top left. Slowly Aldebaran will move from the Moon's sunlit side to its darker portion. The craze would last for only three minutes or even less.
Areas that would be able to see it would be from south of the line and moving in from Los Angeles to 50 miles south of Las Vegas. It continues to Denver and then 30 miles of Minneapolis to the northeast of Ishpeming Township, Michigan and then on to George's Island, Labrador.
North of the line, the areas would be the Pacific Northwest and then to northern central California. It goes on to the northern and the central Rockies and then northern and central Plains. These areas will see the Moon pass in front of Aldebaran but will not cover it.
For the times, Los Angeles will see the event at 10:27 p.m. PDT on October 18. 10:29 p.m. PDT it will be seen in Searchlight, NV just south of Las Vegas. In Denver that would be at 11:40 p.m. MDT. For Sioux Falls, South Dakota it would be at 12:51 a.m. CDT on October 19 and at 12:57 a.m. CDT it would be just south of Minneapolis. Earlier a grazing event has been seen on July 29 from Texas and Oklahoma.
Aldebaran is an orange-red giant about 67 light-years away from the Earth. It is the bright orange eye of the constellation Taurus. The grazing occultations began January 29, 2015, and was seen in the Arctic region. The next Aldebaran occultation that would be seen in North America would be on December 12-13.
Astronomers have also determined where an giant ice planet will likely be formed around a young star, as reported earlier.
