Lunar Occultations during the 2026 Mar. 3 Total Lunar Eclipse - New 2026 February 28
by David Dunham
Occultations during the March 3rd Total Lunar Eclipse - One good event for w. N. America
On Feb. 26, two meessages to the IOTAoccultations groups.io list
discussed opportunities for the March 3rd total lunar eclipse;
I copy thier messages below, with comments and information that
I've added:
Brian Cudnik wrote: Also keep an eye [or better, camera] out for
lunar meteor impacts. The 2019 total lunar eclipse showed that this
is very much possible. I suggest starting with the darkened half
about 10:30 UT and continue monitoring thru the 58 minute totality
phase until about 12:45 UT, or when the Moon gets too low for your
location. Good luck!
Earlier, Michael Camilleri via groups.io wrote:
The upcoming lunar eclipse on March 2nd/3rd gives a huge opportunity for
lunar occultations of stars much fainter than usually possible. Occult 4
will run the predictions for you and accounts for the penumbra and umbra.
For my site there are about 70 events (NZ is in the totality zone). East
coast of Australia and West Coast of NA and Japan also have the entire
eclipse so observers there will have similar numbers of events. Areas
further away still have a lot of events.
I wrote: ***HOWEVER, all of the cameras we use these days are red-sensitive,
so they enhance the Moon’s red umbra, making it hard to observe occultations
against it. My experience has been that with 20cm SCT’s, occultations of even
9th-mag. stars can be difficult to record. If a volcanic eruption a few months
before the eclipse has ejected enough dust and sulfur dioxide into our atmosphere,
it will darken the umbra and fainter occultations can be observed, but there have
been no such recent volcanic events.
OCCULTATION AND GRAZE OF 7.4-MAG. SAO 118571 for WESTERN NORTH AMERICA (by D. Dunham)
I think for this eclipse, ONE OCCULTATION will be outstanding for North Americans –
it is the occultation and graze of 7.4-mag. SAO 118571 visible from western N. America.
Observations will be valuable to characterize the possible close duplicity of the star;
according to Occ 585, recorded photoelectrically by D. Edwards on 1979 April 9, the star
has an 8.8-mag. companion 0.034” away in PA 104 deg. as reported in Occultation Newsletter,
but with that close separation, orbital motion will surely change the PA for 2026.
Below is information about the graze path. But first, I’ve generated total lunar occultation
predictions for 144 North American cities for this occultation in this plain text file;
read the information at the top of that file for important explanatory information. You can
also generate predictions for your location using Occult4 where you can generate a local Moonview.
Here is an Occult4-Moonview showing the paths across the Moon for several major cities for
this occultation. 15 selected N. American (and one Hawaiian) cities were used; showing more
clutters it up too much, making it illegible. With your image viewing software, expand the
view to make the city #s more legible. The cities are listed in this prediction file for
just them with the same city #s as on the Moonview. Read the comments at the top of that file
for more about the occultation. Predictions for many occultations during the eclipse are given
in prediction files for all of 2026 for five Arizona observatories that you can get here.
THE NORTHERN LIMIT GRAZE PATH passes along the Rocky Mountains that form the British Columbia-Alberta
border, then crosses w. and s. Montana, n.e. Wyoming, and Nebraska before the altitude becomes too
low west of Omaha, as shown on the map on p. 173 of the 2026 RASC Observer’s Handbook and on the
1st page of the .pdf here. This Occult map shows the path relative to major N. American cities.
The corresponding annotated northern limit prediction gives the U.T. of central graze, and circumstances,
as a function of longitude. It is an edited version that has removed data for the same longitudes covering
the path in the high Arctic where the graze will be too low to observe. Occult4 does not give the percent
sunlit of the Moon along the graze path; this is important during lunar eclipses since the percent sunlit
of the part of the Moon's disk NOT in the umbra (that's the xxE number where E indicates lunar eclipse,
rather than the usual + or - for waxing and waning phases) changes rapidly along the path and is important
to assess the visibility of the graze. I've added this value, obtained for the corresponding times, from
various total occultation prediction lists. The Occult graze list DOES give the umbral distance in place of
the cusp angle; the umbral distance (U rather than N or S) is 0 if the event is at the center of the Moon's
umbra (the darkest part) and is 100 at the edge of the umbra.
The limit data are computed for an elevation above sea level of 500m, but the path shifts considerably with
elevation; if you want to try to observe the graze, let me know the area where you plan to try and we’ll try
to generate limit data for you, including Google Earth files, for site selection. Here are two graze profiles –
one for the area west of Calgary and the other for s. Montana, where the profile will line up better to produce
more occultations of the star by lunar mountains and craters.
The current NWS cloud cover forecast map favor Montana (good for the graze there), and Nevada, s. Calif.,
Arizona, and N. Mex., and one for Alaska looks good for s. cen. and e. Alaska, but poor for Juneau and
other parts of the panhandle, and the perenniel cloudy Aleutians. Oahu should be partly cloudy;
but mostly cloudy over the other Hawaiian islands.
M. Camilleri continued: If lunar grazes are your thing there might be a few in your region during full umbra,
and they are much easier to observe as there is no bright terminator nearby.
He notes there is an occultation of rho Leonis down the Eastern seaboard of NA. It is a bright mag 3.8
double star, extremely close so only usually observed by interferometry.
**DD: but NO** - there will be an occultation of rho Leonis (ZC 1547) over the e. USA on March 3, but
as this Occult map for the event shows, it will occur around 1h UT, about 12h before the total lunar eclipse,
so the event will be unobservable against the full Moon.
For Australasia there is an occultation of 59 Leonis (ZC 1600), a bright mag 5 double, with an easily observed
time delta of a few seconds. **DD: Sorry**, this occultation will occur after the umbral phases of the lunar
eclipse has ended, so it won’t be observable, just against the sunlit edge of the full Moon. The Occult s. limit data
for the event shows this, with the graze occurring along the whole path over Australia after the end of the umbral
eclipse at 13:17.5 UT. David D.
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Page set up by David and Joan Dunham on 2026 February 28
Cell phone +1-301-526-5590
email iotadunham@yahoo.com