Occultation

[T]he diſtance of any place within this kingdom from it, will not much vary the manner of their Appearance in any of the Phænomena, except the Eclipſe of the Sun: for, in the Occultations, the Stars will appeare to paſs nearly under the ſame Angles and Spots of the Moon; […]

The bright star Aldebaran is to be occulted by the moon on December 20th, at about 5 o'clock pm. Aldebaran is said to be eight hundred and eighty times the mass of the sun, with a diameter of over 8,000,000 miles; a distance so great that a meteor traveling at the rate of thirty miles per second, would require over three days to cross the disk of the star. Yet, notwithstanding the immense volume, the accultation will occur in a moment, so great is the distance of the star from us, and will continue for about one hour and eight minutes.

Stellar occultations potentially provide the highest precision data for relating solar system ephemerides to the stellar reference frame. For example, occultations by the Uranian rings can define the position of the occulted star relative to the rings to better than 0.02 mas (equivalent to a few hundred meters at the distance of Uranus). Occultations by atmospheres can be less precise than occultations by symmerical solid bodies, like rings and large asteroids, with a precision on the order of 1.0 mas.

[…] I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing the waning crescent Moon swing over Venus in the predawn sky on Wednesday morning, April 22, 2009. While the occultation was visible from much of North America, it was only in Arizona and parts of other surrounding states, where Wendee and I live, that the ingress would take place in a completely dark sky. It would be a highlight of the International Year of Astronomy, which reached its peak during 2009.

If Mr. [Thomas] Campbell's poetry was of a kind that could be forgotten, his long fits of silence would put him fairly in the way of that misfortune. […] [T]he re-appearance of such an author, after those long periods of occultation, is naturally hailed as a novelty—and he receives the double welcome of a celebrated stranger and a remembered friend.

In western Europe, the most celebrated instance of the occultation of a river was that of the Rhone, near Bellegarde, on the confines of France and Savoy, about 18 miles from Geneva; but, alas, on visiting this interesting spot in the autumn of 1855, I found that the Perte du Rhone no longer exists; for the Sardinian Government, in which territory it was, had blown up the rocky roof, beneath which it had been engulfed, in order to facilitate the conveyance of timber on the river.

We are therefore, constantly hoping for the joy and happiness, personified in Imām al-Mahdi, the Imām who is alive at this very time, and who is himself awaiting the command of Allāh to reappear, so that he may strengthen the weak, and judge the oppressors. He will reappear "without having done Bay'ah to any oppressor". He went into occultation because he did not want [to] submit to any unjust ruler.