An occultation of a star, though not appealing to ordinary observation with the same force, is intrinsically an event as striking as an eclipse of the sun. It establishes the fact of the moon's proximity. Were it not that the moon's brightness overpowers the light of the small stars, occultations would be commonplace phenomena. As things are, we can watch, with the eye unaided, the eclipses of the planets and larger stars, not down, perhaps, to below the third magnitude; and the rarity of such

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... onspicuous objects makes the occultations correspondingly rare.