Stargazers taking pleasure in the elegance of August’s “Sturgeon Moon”– which is likewise a blue supermoon — on Aug. 20 might have seen something strange: a world vanishing from the sky.

In the wee hours of the early morning, the moon occulted– or totally passed in front of– the intense world Saturnappearing to snuff the ringed world’s light for more than an hour. The uncommon lunar occultation of Saturn showed up just from parts of South America, Europe and Africa. If you missed it, do not stress– astrophotographer Josh Dury handled to catch the whole occasion from his perch in Somerset, England.

Taken in between approximately 4 and 5:30 a.m. regional time (11:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. EDT), Dury’s image integrates 30 private shots into a single legendary time lapse that charts the complete course of the lunar occultation. Saturn’s rings are plainly noticeable as the world moves behind the northwestern limb of the moon, coming back in the east about an hour later on. The 2 things appear to share the very same spot of sky, Saturn is in truth hundreds of millions of miles further away, making the occultation a cosmic optical impression comparable to a solar eclipse

The moon appears particularly big and intense today since it’s a supermoon– a moon orbiting within 90% of its closest indicate Earth, likewise called perigee. At perigee, the moon can appear about 15% larger in size than it does at its farthest point from Earth (apogee) and can look significantly brighter also, according to NASAAugust’s moon is the very first of 4 successive supermoons, providing skywatchers lots of possibilities to value our lunar buddy this fall. Ensure you have a set of stargazing field glasses or a great little telescope to get the most out of the moon’s upcoming close-ups.

Related: The 10 finest stargazing occasions of 2024

If you missed out on the occultation of Saturn today, you might have an opportunity to identify the next one in September, depending upon where you live. In the early hours of Sept. 17, the moon will once again appear to demolish the ringed world. This time, audiences in parts of Australia and the western United States will have the very best view, according to In-the-Sky. org

This has actually been a hectic month for stargazers, with dynamic aurorasa planetary combination and the Perseid meteor shower all illuminating the night sky. Simply one week earlier, Dury travelled to the astronomically proper website of Stonehenge to catch lots of “shooting stars” tipping over the ancient monolith, where he took another beautiful composite image of the spectacular sky program.

There are still a lot of skywatching occasions to come in 2024, consisting of a few of the year’s finest meteor showersGet out, look up and delight in.

Brandon is the space/physics editor at Live Science. His writing has actually appeared in The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation site and other outlets. He holds a bachelor’s degree in imaginative composing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. He takes pleasure in composing most about area, geoscience and the secrets of deep space.