On December 16, Mars will occult the 7.4 magnitude star HIP 14. The occultation is visible from New Zealand. Mars will be gibbous, with the disappearance at the “dark” limb about 1” from the terminator. The time of disappearance in New Zealand is likely to be between 11:26 and 11:27 UT, that is 12.26 to 12.27 am NZDT on the morning of December 17. The use of a high power eye piece is likely to help see the disappearance. Mars will have an altitude of about 16 degrees, so the power which can be used may be limited by seeing.

The star will reappear at the lit limb of Mars about 6.5 minutes later as seen from New Zealand.

Mars will have a magnitude 0.0 and the area of the illuminated portion of the disk is just over 60 square arc seconds. This means the average magnitude per arc second of Mars will be close to 4.5. Thus Mars may well briefly overwhelm the star at reappearance.

Occultation by Phobos:

The program GUIDE also shows an occultation of HIP 14 by Mars’ satellite Phobos about 9 minutes after it is occulted by the planet. Phobos is of course very small, only about 20 km across. So the path of this occultation is naturally very narrow and is somewhat uncertain. One GUIDE prediction of this event (shown below) indicates a path across the North Island of New Zealand, with the potential to pass over New Plymouth and Gisborne. A second prediction shows a path across Palmerston North. I suggest it would be worth watching for this event from anywhere in NZ.

According to GUIDE, the likely time of any occultation by Phobos in New Zealand is between 11:38 and 11:40 with Mars at an altitude of 15°. The maximum length of any occultation will be only about 1 second. However with a star magnitude 7.4 this may be observable.

We would value any reports of attempted observations of these events.

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