Occultation of Mars from Kitt Peak National Observatory

In an alignment of celestial bodies, Mars was captured here rising out of a lunar occultation on 13 January 2025 using the new Visitor Center 0.6-meter Shreve Telescope at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, near Tucson, Arizona. An occultation is when an object becomes hidden from an observer’s view by another object passing between them. The passing object must be larger than the hidden object. Otherwise the event is a transit, such as the transit of Mercury in front of the Sun in 2019, as photographed from NSF Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO), another Program of NSF NOIRLab.

Three days after this photo was taken, Mars was in opposition to the Sun from our point of view on Earth, so coming out of occultation the red planet was almost fully sunlit and appeared brighter and bigger than usual. 

Two evening visitor guides at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center produced this image using a publicly-available camera and free software. KPNO is home to one of the largest, most diverse groupings of astronomical instruments in the northern hemisphere. The observatory is located in Arizona’s Quinlan mountains in the Schuk Toak District on the Tohono O‘odham Nation. The public can visit KPNO every day for daytime and nighttime tours to explore facilities, observe through telescopes, and even stay overnight to image deep-sky objects under clear, dark skies.

You can find an annotated version of this image here.