At the end of 1994, I received a call asking if we would be willing to travel to Mexico to observe the grazing occultation of Venus by the Moon in January 1995. The originator was Richard Hoagland, known for his theory on the origin of the ‘face on Mars’. Hoagland was familiar with my work and believed that there is a possibility that evidence for water at the poles of the moon might be established by carefully analyzing a bright light source occulted at the pole. Such an opportunity then would naturally fit with this occultation. Venus, shining at magnitude -4 was going to pass behind the flat features of the north lunar pole.

The path of this event stretched from just south of Tampico, Mexico to Ambergris Caye in Belize. Hoagland believed that there might be evidence of a dusky band parallel to the moon’s circumference across the disk of a planet being occulted by the moon. This band is suggestive to him of a lunar medium that refracts or scatters sunlight. Nineteenth century astronomers who saw the band, immediately suspected a lunar atmosphere but today we recognize that if there is any such atmosphere, it is probably negligible at best.

Our objective then was to video tape the silhouette of Venus against the lunar limb and to see if any such band might be detected. I enlisted Lynn Palmer and Richard Nugent to go with me to Tampico, where the elevation of Venus at the time of the grazing occultation was only 6.5 degrees. Adding to this negative factor was the weather in that region at this time of year. Several years ago I had traveled to Belize to watch a grazing occultation of the first magnitude star Antares and was clouded out during the month of February. Another possible site for the Venus graze was in the Yucatan peninsula, about 12 hours driving time during nighttime. Even though Venus’ elevation there would be 16 degrees, the prospect of such a drive given the narrow roads and wandering livestock was reminiscent of our November 1993 total lunar eclipse venture to Baja. Hence I was not looking to repeat that hazardous experience.

At the last minute, I obtained weather inputs that would give us a 50% chance of seeing the occultation regardless which route we chose. With that in mind, we loaded Richard’s 10-inch Meade telescope and my Celestron 5 and flew to Mexico. I chose Tampico as the best option. With one hour and seven minutes to connect to our Mexicana Airlines flight from Mexico City to Tampico, we suddenly found ourselves circling aimlessly above Mexico City airport. Rain and lightning conspired to prevent us from landing on time. After a 47 minute delay we were able to arrive safely in Mexico City with only 10 minutes to spare. We arrived at a congested gate area and had to wait for a ‘people mover’ which took another 15 minutes. by the time we passed through immigration, the Tampico flight had left. That was the final flight of the day.

Somewhat dejected, we were able to get Continental Airlines to pay for a hotel and meal before we would turn around and return to Houston the next day. Mexico City, however, was scheduled to experience a total occultation of Venus by the Moon. Traditionally the visibility in Mexico City is bad both day and night; it is compromised by its location in a valley and the presence of terrible air pollution.

Richard checked his large telescope and tripod in an overnight locker and we proceeded to the hotel. We had brought Subway sandwiches to munch on but with the free dinner we were given, the sandwiches began to return to their earthly origins. After the excellent hotel dinner I pondered whether we might view Venus from the hotel roof. Wandering up to the 8th floor, I found the roof stairwell and it was padlocked. I continued to look and found an alternate stairwell which led to an open door and a great rooftop location overlooking the airport runway. The view toward the eastern horizon, where we might expect Venus to be, was flat and inviting. However, fog and overcast skies pervaded.

We agreed to set our alarm and get up at 3:30am to check the sky prior to the occultation, scheduled for 4:49am. A wristwatch alarm woke us up. Peering out of the window I could actually see the Big Dipper. We then ran to the roof to see the sky and found it clear! Fog lurked along the runway and most of the airplanes were immersed in a fog bank about 30 feet high. Encouraged by what we saw, I brought up all of my equipment and we proceeded to set up the Celestron and video camera. At about 4:15am we spotted the waning 15% crescent moon just above the top of the fog bank.

I found the moon on the TV screen and after about five minutes, the two hour capacity NiCad battery that powered the TV suddenly died. Luckily I had brought three batteries but only planned to use them in case a car battery could not be found. Due to our abortive situation, no car was available. I attached battery #2 only to have it die several minutes later. NiCads are notoriously undependable. With just one battery left, I connected it and activated the video at 4:40am for just one minute in order to relocate the moon. My polar alignment was slipshod and I had to manually correct the drive motor every 15 seconds or so in order to relocate the moon.

At 4:49am Lynn, who had been constantly monitoring the moon for the slightest sign of Venus, called out that she saw it. Immediately I activated the video system and found the fat 50% illuminated image of the planet as it slowly slipped out from behind the dark limb. We were only going to able to see the reappearance, since the moon had occulted Venus much earlier. The whole process would have taken about 70 seconds, but I was able to record around 80% of this emersion. We had been successful in a strange sort of way.

The fog bank began to creep in; within 10 minutes after Venus completely reappeared, the bank had overtaken the moon and Venus. They vanished forever. We then packed up and by 5:30am had checked out of the hotel and were at the Continental Airlines counter shortly thereafter. The three of us boarded the flight to Houston which was delayed due to fog. The flight moved northward along the coast. I asked the flight attendant to notify us when we overflew Tampico which conveniently lay along our route of travel. Twenty-five minutes later the pilot told us to look down and we would not see Tampico. The town was socked in and probably was foggy during the occultation some three hours earlier. At 9:15am we landed in Houston, this time ending a rather unusual expedition. The tape was sent to Hoagland and we have not heard if he was able to detect any evidence supporting his theory. The occultation we had seen from Mexico did not occur exactly over the pole, but it was fairly close.