The nearly full Moon will pass only 0.39° south of Spica, the bright star of constellation Virgo. That is, as seen from the center of Earth. From southern places on the surface of our planet, the Moon appears farther north, and it will occult (hide) the star for a wide band of the south Pacific, from the Melanesian islands almost to the southern Chile, with a grazing touch to the coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
Here is the evening-twilight scene for a North American location as the Moon rises into view, a few hours before its encounter with Spica.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations. Arrows through the moving bodies show their movement (against the starry background) from 2 days earlier to 2 days later. The Moon is exaggerated 4 times in size. It is shown at its apparent position for the location on Earth, displaced by parallax; the arrows are along its path as seen from the center of the Earth.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.
One way: right-click, and choose ”View image” or ”Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose ”Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or, if you click ‘Refresh’ or press function key 5, you’ll see the latest version.