Watch a lunar occultation of Uranus

If you live in Europe, north Africa or north-west Asia, you can watch Uranus pass behind the moon and emerge on the other side in a rare lunar occultation this month

By Abigail Beall

ON 14 September, stargazers will be treated to a lunar occultation of Uranus. In this rare event, the planet will pass behind the moon in the sky, with the moon temporarily blocking Uranus from view. Around an hour later, it will re-emerge on the moon’s other side.

Because the moon is so close to Earth compared with everything else we see in the night sky, it appears at different points, relative to the stars and planets, depending on where you look from. This means that lunar occultations, where the moon appears to move in front of a planet, are …