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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6805679" data-attributes="member: 177">Such occultations don't happen that often.  From 1800 to 2100 there were only about 30 instances of planets in our solar system occulting known bright stars (other than the Sun, that is).  That means it happens about once every couple of years.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultation#List_of_mutual_planetary_occultations_and_transits" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultation#List_of_mutual_planetary_occultations_and_transits</a>This sounds surprising, because you figure there are a lot of stars.  But remember that the occultation happens only when there is a *very* straight line from Earth, to the planet, and then to a bright star.  It isn't like there's a huge disc of the Moon here - the planet itself is basically a dot, one pixel or less, passing in front of another dot.Now, try to find that happening when you don't know where the planet is, or which star might be occulted, when you don't even know if you had a telescope pointing in the right direction when it happened.</blockquote>