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[Centaur]

2011 will be an incredibly poor year for lunar occultations of planets and first magnitude stars. There will be only three, all planets, and none visible from North America. In fact for Chicagolanders, I calculate that the recent difficult to observe occultation of Mars will be the only example of a bright planet being occulted during this decade. Even when accepting occultations of stars up to magnitude +4.0, Chicagoland will be in a near drought during 2011. There will be only three nighttime examples, all magnitude +2.9:

Mu Geminorum during evening of January 17
Mu Geminorum during afternoon and evening of March 13 (immersion before sunset)
Pi Sagittarii during evening of August 10

[patrickm]

You know what traditionally befalls bearers of bad news??

I never knew it was this rare. Ahh, ignorance.

[Centaur]

Dec 22, 2010 23:21:18 GMT -6 patrickm said:

I never knew it was this rare. Ahh, ignorance.

As one astronomical sage put it, “There’s an awful lot of black out there.”