Four bright major planets will be occulted in 2009. There is probably little new that can be learned from occultations of major planets events in this age of space exploration, but they are still interesting to watch. Photometric records, possibly derived from video recordings, could be used to determine the sizes of asteroids, although timings of occultations of stars by minor planets give more accurate information. - D. Dunham

All times given in these predictions are in Universal Time. Predictions included both disappearance and reappearance times, although depending on the phase of the moon, one or the other may not be possible to observe at the instant of the event. When Moon % is "+" (waxing), the star will disappear on the dark side, and reappearance is on the bright side; when the Moon % is "-" (waning), the star will reappear on the dark side, and disappearance on the bright side. Observing disappearances and reappearance of stars on the bright side are difficult, and accuracies in timing these events are not reliable.

Note: Starting with 2009 predictions, cities will be prefixed with their 2 letter country code. Those for the United States will also include the 2 letter state code after the city. For a complete listing of the 2 letter country codes used in the predictions please download this PDF file for reference. For those wanting the longitude and latitude of the cities used in the prediction process for converting times to your location, please download this zip file for reference.

If there are no predications with the accompanying map of coverage, it is because it is either a daytime event, or in sparsely located regions where cities in the Occult database do not exist

How to convert the predicted time to your site location time using the A/B factor

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Date UT - Time	Planet	Mag.	Moon(%)	Visible Area
25 Jan - 04h	Mars	1.5	01-	Antarctica & New Zealand
22 Feb - 20h	Mercury	0.1	05-	Korea, Japan, SE Siberia
23 Feb - 01h	Jupiter	-1.5	4-	E Asia, Japan, N Indonesia
28 Feb - 00h	Venus	-4.3	8+	Parts of Antarctica
22 Apr - 13h	Venus	-4.2	08-	N America except far South & East
18 Aug - 05h	Vesta	8.4	07-	Canary Islands
13 Sept - 16h	Mars	1.1	29-	NW Siberia, Lapland, Greenland
12 Oct - 01h	Mars	0.9	42-	Area around Kerguelen Islands

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