The Moon Is Hiding Aldebaran As The Geminids Show Up

The Moon stands low in the east on the night of Dec. 12, found on the right of Aldebaran in Taurus and just below the Pleiades. As it moves closer to Aldebaran, a telescope reveals that it hides some stars in the V-shaped Hyades star cluster that was on the way.

The first that was hidden was the Gamma Tauri found at the point of the V. It winked off at the Moon's E limb at 9:39 p.m. that was seen in London and also seen a minute earlier in Edinburgh, according to The Guardian.

There are other Hyades stars that were hidden, at near 153 lightyears away. These were also occulted before the Aldebaran itself and slipped behind the Moon's upper limb later that night, according to Enid News.

The brightest star to be occulted this year is the Aldebaran, it was hidden from 5:24 a.m. to 5:53 a.m. on the Dec. 13 for the stargazers in London and from 5:26 a.m. to 5:41 a.m. in Edinburgh. From Stornoway and Aberdeen, they experienced a grazing occultation, and thus winking on and offs was witnessed as it slips in the back of successive mountains at the lunar limb. From that north of the line, it missed the Moon completely.

The chart that appeared before depicted the south sky from horizon to overhead at 12:30 a.m. but was also valid for 10:30 p.m. in the middle of January and also 8:30 p.m. in the middle of February. Orion was found at its heart, so were Canis Major and Sirius, which is the brightest star of the planet Earth's night sky.

Aldebaran, Hyades and Pleiades can stand above and right of Orion; however, Auriga was clearly visible almost overhead. Toward the upper left were Pollux and Castor, the Twins in Gemini, and also the radiant ones for the Geminids meteor shower were at their peak at about 8 p.m. that was on Dec.13 as well as on Dec. 17.