The Moon will be only about 16 hours from full when, on Saturday evening June 6th in the Americas, it will cross the 1st-magnitude red supergiant star Antares. The occultation will be visible across much of the United States and Canada, all of Central America and the Caribbean, and northern South America. Surrounding areas get a still-spectacular near miss.

In a telescope, you’ll see the round Moon’s most shadow-marked rim creep up to fire-colored Antares. The star will blink out behind the invisible dark limb just before it reaches the brightly sunlit lunar mountains and plains. Antares has such a large angular size for a star (40 milliarcseconds) that, seen from locations where it grazes the Moon’s edge, it may appear to fade down for a second or less rather than snapping out instantly.

In North America, Antares disappears some time between 9:40 and 11:20 p.m. EDT, depending on your location. See the IOTA website for a timetable with local details.

Antares will reappear up to an hour or more later from behind the sharper bright limb, with the Moon now higher in the southeastern sky.

Antares and Aldebaran are the only strongly reddish stars that are near enough to the ecliptic, and bright enough, ever to be seen well on the Moon’s bright limb. For these rare few seconds, to me they look like a fire on the Moon.