There was a lunar occultation of Mars on the evening of 13 January 2025. An luncar occultation is when the disk of the Moon (or Luna) passes in front of a star or planet. This was an easy event to observe with the Moon low in the eastern sky.

My plan was to shoot several/many images of the ingress and then multiple images of the egress. Unfortunately, most of the images (but not all) were out of focus. I suspect that the rapid cooling of the telephoto lens was the cause of lost focus. Once I noticed the issue and re-focused it stayed in focus.

Time lapse of the Moon and Mars.

I shot images at 3-second intervals as egress started then switched to 30-second intervals. These were assembled into a time-lapse video, shown below.

The next Moon-Mars occultation visible in North America will occur in February, 2042.