Space photo of the week: Mars rises over the moon's horizon at the best possible time

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A new image has emerged of the Red Planet rising above the lunar limb after being occulted by the moon in January.

a photograph of Mars rising behind the moon
Mars rising out of a lunar occultation on January 13, 2025, captured by the Shreve Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. (Image credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. Winsky & A. Sorensen / Image processing J. Winsky & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

What it is: Mars and the moon

Where it is: The solar system

Why it's so special:

Something strange happened late at night on January 13, 2025. Sometime between about 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. EST (depending on where you were in North America), the full "Wolf Moon" drifted across Mars, briefly swallowing the Red Planet from the sky.

This spectacular new image from a new telescope in Hawaii marks the moment the Red Planet reappeared over the lunar horizon — a "Mars-rise."

So-called occultations of Mars by the moon are not particularly rare. There were occultations in both the previous and following months, according to In The Sky. However, any specific lunar occultation of Mars (or indeed any planet) can only be seen from a small area of the Earth's surface. That's because the moon is far closer to the Earth than Mars, so what you see depends on your point of view from Earth; the moon's position in the sky on any night can differ by about four times the diameter of the full moon.

Related: Full moons of 2025: When is the next full moon?

With the previous and following occultations seen only from the Arctic and Russia, astronomers at Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Quinlan mountains near Tucson, Arizona, only had one shot at capturing the celestial spectacle. What's more, the occultation of Mars only presents two very short opportunities to capture the event: the first, called ingress, is when Mars slips behind the moon and, for a few seconds, is seen setting beneath the lunar surface; about an hour later, it emerges as a "Mars-rise" in what astronomers call egress.

Photos of the latter, captured by two evening visitor guides at the Kitt Peak National Observatory Visitor Center using its new 0.6-meter Shreve Telescope — a public telescope that visitors are allowed to use — has been made available as annotated and zoomable versions as well as a full-size original.

It's a special image because, as well as the rare celestial alignment necessary for it to occur, it happened just a few days before Mars reached opposition.

Opposition is when Earth is positioned between an outer planet and the sun, making that planet as close as possible and, therefore, as big and bright as it can get. For Mars, opposition only happens once every 26 months. That's because Mars takes 687 Earth days to orbit the sun, and Earth takes 365 days, so Earth passes between Mars and the sun every 789 days.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

Jamie Carter
Jamie Carter
Live Science contributor

Jamie Carter is a Cardiff, U.K.-based freelance science journalist and a regular contributor to Live Science. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners and co-author of The Eclipse Effect, and leads international stargazing and eclipse-chasing tours. His work appears regularly in Space.com, Forbes, New Scientist, BBC Sky at Night, Sky & Telescope, and other major science and astronomy publications. He is also the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com.

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