Uranus, as viewed from Earth, will disappear behind a very large, obnoxious interloper on Thursday, June 11th, at 12 pm PDT / 3 pm EDT / 19:00 UTC.
This is the day of the occultation of Uranus, as seen from small swathes of land and sea primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. Slooh will go live from the East Coast of Australia to catch a glimpse of Uranus, interrupted.
The live broadcast will be manned by Slooh host Eric Edelman and Slooh astronomer Bob Berman. Viewers can ask questions to be considered live with the hashtag UranusPhotobomb
Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said that whether people call it an occultation, eclipse or photobomb, it’s a very cool event when the Moon covers up that strange, green, often-mispronounced world.
Berman added that since it will only happen over Australia’s part of the world, and won’t be seen from Europe or North America, Slooh will use Australian feed partners to bring us the real-time views.”
Watching Uranus telescopically vanish behind the detailed, sunlit portion of the Moon and then suddenly emerge from the lunar dark side, should be pretty dramatic, added Berman.
Outside of the photobomb zone around Australia and New Zealand, observers in the rest of the world will see Uranus close to the crescent Moon in the eastern pre-dawn sky. This presents an excellent opportunity to spot this distant ice giant with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.
