The moon......explained

Unexplained mysteries to the rescue. Posted the pics of the moon in there, and got an almost instant reply. I love that forum.

Anyway, here it is (courtesy of Waspie_Dwarf)

The object was the planet Venus. Venus is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon and this is why this was so obvious. From your location the two came very close together, but from much of Europe the Moon actually passed in front of Venus.

When the Moon passes in front of a star or planet (or a planet on asteroid passes in front of a star) it is known as an occultation. These are very common for the Moon, for example it occulted Saturn on 2^nd March this year, and it frequently occults bright stars. They are less common for planets and asteroids.

Occultations are useful as precisely timing when the star disappears and reappears can give accurate information as to the exact orbit and diameter of an object. This is not so important with the Moon as we have more direct methods of measurement, but can be extremely useful with asteroids.

The rings of Uranus were discovered in 1977 when it occulted a star. The star flickered repeatedly both before and after it was occulted by the planet's disc. Astronomers concluded that the only possible explanation for this was a set of rings, a conclusion that has now been confirmed by images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope.


I'm off to play "cha mama na cha baba". hehehe